John Gill Commentary Deuteronomy 28:34

"so that thou shalt be mad for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see." — Deuteronomy 28:34 (ASV)

So that you shall be mad, for the sight of your eyes that
you shall see .
On account of the shocking things seen by them, their dreadful calamities, oppressions, and persecutions, such as before related; not only violent diseases on their bodies, which were grievous to behold, as well as their pains were intolerable, and made them mad.

But to be deprived of a betrothed wife, a newly built house, and a newly planted vineyard; to have an ox slain, and an ass taken away by their enemies, and their sheep given to them before their eyes; to have their sons and daughters taken from them, and brought up in another religion, and to be stripped of their substance; these have made them stark mad, insomuch that they have sometimes destroyed themselves and their families.

In Germany, in their rage and madness, they burnt a city and themselves in it; and, in the same country, being summoned by an edict to change their religion, or to be burnt, they agreed to meet together in a certain house, and destroy one another; and first parents killed their children, and husbands their wives, and then killed themselves; leaving only one person to be their doorkeeper, who finished the tragedy by destroying himself, as their own historian relates ^F13 . Other stories of the like kind are reported of them, and some such facts as done in our own nation ^F14 .

---

FOOTNOTES:

• F13: Ib. (Shebet Judah, sive Hist. Jud.) sect. 34, 36. p. 214, 215, 216, 217.
• F14: See Bishop Patrick in loc. and Dr. Newton (Bishop of Bristol) on Prophecies, vol. 1. Dissert. 7. sect. 14. p. 195, 196.