For Jehovah's portion is his people; Jacob the lot of his inheritance.
Moses is near the end of his life. His song looks back past Israel's slavery in Egypt to a time before the nation existed — to the moment God spread mankind across the earth. This verse gives the reason for that ancient arrangement. God had already set His love on a people not yet born.
One commentator ties this verse to the one before it, where God divides up the nations:
At the same time (verse 8) we have an all-important declaration. In His government of the world, God had made Israel the centre. He had arranged the nations of the earth, in their various locations, with respect to the boundaries of Israel. Israel was the first object of those ways. For His earthly people are Jehovah's portion, His inheritance upon earth.
God settled the nations in their lands long before Abraham lived. One writer points out who was already in view:
It is important to notice what God did when He divided the people in Genesis 10. He gave them all their place in relation to a people who did not yet exist. He set His grace on Israel before Israel or their great ancestor existed. When God allotted the nations their position, He allotted it all around His own plot of land. That land is now trampled under foot by the Gentiles. He kept it for His people. So His ways with the nations had Israel in view. Now His church is His chief interest, and there is not a movement going on under heaven that God will not turn to the good of His church.
Moses could have used the honoured name Israel. Instead the verse says Jacob, and one writer marks that word:
The song carries them back to a time beyond these experiences. It goes back before the nation existed at all, when the sons of Adam were finding the homes God assigned them. Even then the Gentiles were receiving their inheritance, and He set their boundaries to fit the needs of a people as many as the children of Israel would become. For in truth they were Jehovah's portion — His people, and Jacob (though only "Jacob") the lot of His inheritance.
Being God's portion did not spare Israel from His discipline. It also means He does not forget those who attack them:
Centuries may pass, as in the case of Amalek, before the judgment is carried out. How many centuries have passed since Edom cried against Jerusalem, "Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!" (Psalm 137:7). God has not forgotten that. His vengeance will certainly overtake her... God's people are precious to Him, though He may have to discipline them under His government.
One writer sets this verse beside what the New Testament says about treasure:
Then how sweet is the next verse: "The Lord's portion is His people." I do not know how far we enter into it. In the New Testament we are told we have treasure in heaven. We are told, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." But Christ has a treasure here upon earth. With that treasure in view, He sold all that He had. He laid aside all His Messiah titles and rights, so that He might secure it... The children of Israel are the people in question in our chapter. But in this present time God is gathering a people out of this world for heaven. He is forming His church.
Christians think of the inheritance as something they receive. One writer points to the other side of it:
But God has His heritage as well as we... That God should inherit a people is a familiar idea in Scripture. He always had a people, and in grace He called His chosen His inheritance (Deuteronomy 32:9). This expression makes clear to faith the true position of God's chosen people, in the middle of a world He has rejected.
- Portion. God calls His people His portion — the share He kept for Himself when He divided up the whole earth.
- Before. God chose that portion before the nation existed and before Abraham lived. Nothing in Israel earned it.
- Jacob. The verse says only Jacob, not the honoured name Israel. That is grace speaking, not merit.
- Precious. He may discipline His people, yet He still avenges them. His judgment on their enemies can take centuries, but it comes.
- Treasure. Christ gave up everything to secure a treasure on earth. God still speaks of an inheritance in His people — you do not only receive a portion, you are one.
He found him in a desert land, And in the waste, howling wilderness; He compassed him about, he watched over him, He preserved him as the apple of his eye.
Moses' song reviews a nation's whole story, then stops on one scene: God coming down to a people in an empty, hostile place and treating them as something fragile and precious. The verse raises two questions: what does God's "finding" mean here, and how far does the care in "the apple of his eye" reach?
This verse sits inside a song that tells Israel's whole story, sin and judgement included. That story is not where the song stops.
One of the grandest and fullest sections of the whole Bible now lies open before us and asks for our prayerful attention. It covers God's dealings with Israel from first to last. It gives a most solemn record of their terrible sin, and of God's wrath and judgement. But, blessed be God, it begins and ends with Him; and this is full of the deepest and richest blessing for the soul. If it were not so, if we had only the sad story of man's ways, we would be completely overwhelmed.
God was not finding strangers. He met a people He had already rescued, at the point where their own strength ran out. Notice which name they carry here.
One phase of God's dealings with His people was over. They were saved (Ex. 14:30). But what about their future? Would He leave them to their own resources now that He had delivered them from judgment and from the power of the enemy? … Moses tells us that "He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness." What was to become of poor Jacob there? Note the name he is given here: weak and failing Jacob, not the princely name Israel. … Later the Saviour "found" the man He had healed of blindness and revealed Himself to him, meeting his spiritual need as well as his bodily need. In the same way Jehovah "found" the people whom He had delivered, and proved Himself enough for their every need until they reached the promised rest.
The empty place is not a flaw in the story. It is what makes the care visible.
Where had He found them? In a desert land, yes, a howling wilderness; but where the Lord's care had only the more opportunity for display. Encircled, watched over, guarded as the pupil of the eye, they had proved this.
The phrase has nothing to do with fruit. The Hebrew word points to the pupil — and to a small reflected image.
Gesenius says this word means 'little man', and then 'the little man of the eye'. That is, the pupil of the eye. In it, as in a mirror, a person sees his own small reflected image. He says this pleasing image is found in several languages. This is the part of the eye that especially needs guarding: God preserved His own as the apple of His eye. Deut. 32:10; Ps. 17:8.
The same picture explains something else: why God reacts so strongly when His people are harmed.
He will be jealous over His people, for those who touch them are touching "the apple of His eye," the pupil, the most sensitive area. He feels deeply everything that affects His beloved people Israel, and certainly no less what affects His body, the Church.
The desert is not only Israel's past. Commentators also see in it a picture of the state we were in when God came for us.
"He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness." Where did God find you and me? In the quarry of nature. We were in the gutter, but, thank God, He came to the gutter for us. We were unclean and sinful. Some of us may have been respectable, and others not respectable at all. But we were all covered with sin — the thing that nailed the Son of God to the cross. But He sought us and saved us. How great is the grace of our God!
- Found. God met Jacob at his weakest, with nothing left. This love shows in the wilderness, not in the promised land.
- Encircled. The desert did not limit His care. It gave that care more room to show.
- Watched. He did not only surround them. He watched over them the whole way through.
- Guarded. "Apple of the eye" means the pupil. We shield it without thinking, and it holds a small image of whoever stands in front of it.
- Untouchable. Nobody can strike what God guards this closely without God Himself feeling it. Writers apply that same tenderness to believers now.
As the eagle stirreth up its nest, Hovereth over its young, Spreadeth out its wings, Taketh them, beareth them on its feathers,
In his final words to Israel, Moses compares the Lord's dealings with His people to a mother eagle. She breaks up her own nest, then flies beneath her falling young — which raises the question: why does God unsettle the life He gave us?
The eagle builds comfort into her nest, and then ruins it on purpose.
It is said that in building her nest she lays the floor with sharp thorns and covers them over with soft down. In this cosy bed her young are hatched and grow up. As they become strong enough to fly, they are reluctant to leave the comfort of the nest. But that condition would not fit them to fulfil their normal functions in later life. So the mother scrapes up the down in the bottom of the nest. When the young eagles feel the sharp thorns they jump over the side of the nest. This tests the strength of their wings and the support of the air. ... Christians are often placed in similar comfortable circumstances. If there were no thorny incidents in our lives, we would never experience the wealth of God's resources. He stirs up the most comfortable nest and makes those inside feel the thorn pricks.
The stirring is only half the picture. The young bird falls into real danger, and the parent puts herself between it and the arrow.
The time comes when she wants to teach her young ones to gaze at the sun, and to soar from the rock themselves. Then she "stirs up her nest and flutters over her young." The young ones must face the open space below. She flings them off the rock! They flutter and sink down toward the homes of men. They come near the hunter's arrow. She swoops down from above in the might of her wing. She "spreads out her wings, takes them, bears them on her wings." The fluttering eaglet rests its wings on the tested strength of the parent wing. The hunter's dart can reach the eaglet's life only through her own. So she teaches them to soar, and to rise and gaze on the bright and glorious sun as only she can.
Another writer names what we naturally lean on instead of God.
The last thing we do naturally is to turn to God. We prefer to lean on friends, or on circumstances. All the gracious dealings of our God are to remove the human supports from beneath us, so that we may use the wings of faith and soar into a fuller knowledge of Himself... She makes the nest uncomfortable, so the young bird has to get out of it. That way it learns to use its wings and begins to fly. The figure teaches complete trust in God.
The eagle stands for power. Here that power carries weakness, and God used the same picture when He reminded Israel how He had carried them to Himself.
But the "flying eagle" can suggest still other thoughts. They are thoughts not only of divine strength or of divine wisdom, but of divine tenderness too, and ministering care. "You have seen," says the Lord to His people of old, "how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself" (Ex. 19:4)... Here then, under this figure, we may think not merely of heights that surpass our powers, and of ways too wonderful for us. We may think of divine love that would enable us to soar, and support our feebleness in it with divine omnipotence.
The song adds that no other god shared the work. One writer ties this to the kind of country God chose for them — a place with nothing else to hold on to.
He brought them into a land of deserts and pits, where they had no need to lean on "a broken reed, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it," because they leaned on God Himself. "Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years." And why? Because "the Lord alone did lead them, and there was no strange god with him."
The picture ends with a line about the Lord leading Israel alone. One writer turns it into a question for us.
"The Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him." Does the Lord alone lead you and me? In all our life, is the Lord alone before our eyes? ... Do not let us allow anything between God and our souls. The Spirit of God is bringing the name and fame of this glorious God before us. He has come to where we were, so that He might bring us to where He is.
- Nest — the soft bed has thorns under the down. The comfort was never meant to last, and God is the One who scrapes it up.
- Stir — trials are not God stepping back. He is pulling away the props we lean on instead of Him, so the wings of faith get used.
- Fall — the eaglet is flung out and drops toward the hunter's arrow. The danger is real, and that is where she teaches it to soar.
- Wings — the parent dives below and takes the dart first. Divine love lifts the weak bird to soar and holds up its feebleness with divine power.
- Soar — the goal is height and sight: a life led by the Lord alone, with no rival god before our eyes.
So Jehovah alone did lead him, And no strange god [was] with him.
Moses' song looks back over Israel's wilderness years and names the one who brought them through: a single guide, with no rival at His side. The verse just before it pictures an eagle with its young. What was that leading like? And do the words about a foreign god speak of Israel's loyalty, or of a God who needs no helper?
The verse names the guide by ruling out every other. One writer turns that into a question about our own lives.
"The Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him." Does the Lord alone lead you and me? In all our life, is the Lord alone before our eyes? "There was no strange god with him." Let us not allow anything to come between God and our souls. This glorious God, whose name and fame the Spirit of God is bringing before us, has come to where we were, so that He might bring us to where He is. He guards us like the apple of His eye.
(Older translations say "strange god" where the ESV says "foreign god.")
God chose a road with nothing in it to lean on.
When did the Lord bring up His people? When the very circumstances He brought them through, and brought them into, were the proof that the Lord was bringing them there. He brought them into a land of deserts and pits. There they had no need to lean on "a broken reed, which goes into a man's hand and pierces it if he leans on it," because they leaned on God Himself. "Neither did your clothing wear out on you, nor did your foot swell, these forty years." And why? Because "the Lord alone did lead them, and there was no strange god with him."
The leading begins with discomfort. The eagle of the previous verse will not leave its young where they are.
People say that when she builds her nest, she lays the floor with sharp thorns and covers them with soft down. When the young are strong enough to fly, they are reluctant to leave the comfort of the nest… So the mother scrapes up the down at the bottom of the nest. When the young eagles feel the sharp thorns, they jump over the side. This tests the strength of their wings and the support of the air… If there were no thorny incidents in our lives, we would never experience the wealth of God's resources.
One writer names what God takes away, and what He is after.
The last thing we do by nature is to turn to God. We prefer to lean on friends, or on circumstances. All the gracious dealings of our God are meant to remove the human supports from beneath us, so that we may use the wings of faith and soar into a fuller knowledge of Himself.
The stirring is only half of it. The eaglet that drops does not fall alone, and the one who catches it meets the danger first.
The young ones must dare the space in mid-air below, and she flings them off the rock! They flutter and sink down toward the homes of men. They come near the fowler's arrow. She swoops down in her might of wing from the height above… The fluttering eaglet rests its wings on the tried strength of the parent wing. The fowler's dart can reach the eaglet's life only through her own.
One writer takes "no foreign god with him" further than Israel keeping clear of idols. God did the whole work without a partner.
By the law He had stirred them up as the eagle stirs her nest. With outstretched wings, as in the pillar of cloud, He had sheltered and nestled them. Then He had borne them up and carried them in His feathers. He, He alone did this, asking help of no strange god. He set them on the high places of Canaan, in the abundance of that rich land.
The guidance was not vague. Israel could see it, day by day, above the tabernacle.
In this way the Lord placed Himself at the head of His redeemed people. In His patient grace He led them through the various stages of their wilderness journey. And the movement of the cloud was the Lord's own word to them. If it rose from the tabernacle, that was the same as His command; and the same held if it stayed on the tabernacle… So the Lord took up the guidance of His people through all their pilgrim path.
- Found. He took them up where nothing else would — a desert with no broken reed to lean on, so that they leaned on Him.
- Stirred. God makes the nest uncomfortable. He takes away the supports we prefer, so that we use the wings of faith.
- Carried. When the eaglet drops, the parent wing is underneath it, and the arrow aimed at it must pass through her first.
- Alone. He asked help of no strange god; the whole journey, from the stirring to the high places, is His work without a partner.
- Followed. Since He led alone, let nothing stand between the soul and Him. Is the Lord alone before our eyes today?
He made him ride on the high places of the earth, And he ate the produce of the field; And he made him suck honey out of the crag, And oil out of the flinty rock;
Moses is closing his song about how God carried a nation through the desert into a rich land. Verse 13 says God fed that nation even from bare rock. How can the hardest place yield anything at all?
One writer takes each picture in the verse as a separate gift, given while God was training His people:
Yet with the training came gracious provision from the hand of God. "He made him ride in the heights of the earth" (v.13). God enabled Israel to rise above their circumstances even in the wilderness. He gave them necessary food, but also "honey from the rock," the sweetness that comes from the knowledge of Christ, who is the Rock. Also, "oil from the flinty rock." That speaks of the Holy Spirit. He has come today from the Lord Jesus in glory, at Pentecost, to make our wilderness path one of real blessing and encouragement. Verses 13 and 14 move on into Israel's blessing in the land of Canaan. Only there did they enjoy the choicest wheat and the grape vines.
Israel's high places were on the earth — the ESV reads "the high places of the land." A believer's high places are somewhere else:
"He made him to ride on the high places of the earth." Where are your high places and mine? They are not on the earth. Thank God, He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1). Israel rode on the high places of the earth. Read those beautiful prophecies of Balaam. He was a wicked prophet, yet God made him speak His own thoughts about Israel. There you see the power and favour and beauty of the people of God as God sees them (Num. 23:24).
The same rock also gives sweetness. What is that sweetness?
"He made him to taste honey out of the rock." Everything that brings God before the soul is the honey. Speaking of God's thoughts, David says they are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, and more desirable than fine gold. Is there anything in man's literature like this? It brings food from God in the power of the Holy Spirit to our souls. Suppose we get where Ephesians 1 puts us. Suppose we come into communion with God, into the joy of God's precious thoughts. Then we know something of what it is to suck the honey out of the rock.
The word behind "flinty rock" names the hardest stone there is. It appears elsewhere in Scripture too:
challamish, 'hard rock' — the rock God brought water out of. Deut. 8:15; Ps. 114:8. Because men opposed Him, Christ set His face like a flint, and He knew He would not be put to shame. Isa. 50:7. God made Jacob to suck oil out of the flinty rock. Deut. 32:13.
Hard circumstances can produce complaint instead. One writer makes the verse a test of our own attitude:
And is it unknown for Christians to find fault with God? … We can also trace His hand feeding and nourishing us every day, and learn that He brings to us the "butter out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock," if He causes us to prove the rocks of the wilderness. The great lesson God teaches us in the wilderness is "to be content."
Commentators differ here. Some draw spiritual lessons for believers today. Others warn against making Israel's earthly portion the church's own:
Do we need to say that all this applies first of all to Israel? No doubt the church may learn from it and profit by it. But to apply it to the church would be a double mistake, and a most serious one. It would pull the church down from a heavenly level to an earthly one. It would also interfere, with no right at all, in the place and portion God appointed for Israel. The church, in the mind of God, is a stranger on the earth. Her portion, her hope, her home, her inheritance, her all is heavenly.
Such rich provision carries its own danger:
How easy this is, and yet how dangerous. God has provided a great wealth of favour for all Christians, and all may share in it freely. Yet our enjoyment of it can be twisted, so that it feeds our self-glory and self-importance. … This is the danger point: to go on eating and feeding and indulging our appetite, enjoying good food and rich provision, but making it serve our own self-importance. Perhaps one of the greatest tests of grace is to be highly privileged and yet lowly in mind and patient with others.
- Rock — challamish is the hardest stone there is. Scripture uses the same picture for Christ's face set like flint.
- Rock gives honey — the sweetness out of that stone is anything that brings God before the soul.
- Rock gives oil — the same flint yields oil: the Spirit, sent from Christ in glory to make a desert road a blessed one.
- Rock lifts high — the God who feeds also raises: Israel over the earth, believers into heavenly places in Christ.
- Rock forgotten — plenty is the danger point. Great privilege with a lowly mind is the real test of grace.
Cream of kine, and milk of sheep, With the fat of lambs, And rams of the breed of Bashan, and he-goats, With the fat of kidneys of wheat; And thou didst drink pure wine, the blood of the grape.
This verse closes a long list of what God spread before Israel in the land: dairy, meat, wheat and wine. The song is still describing the Giver. The question it raises is what such kindness will do to the people who receive it.
Everything from the opening of the song to this point traces one hand at work. One commentator marks the exact place where the tone changes, and it is not here.
At verse 15 we reach a very different note in the song of Moses. Up to this point we have had God before us: His actings, His purposes, His counsels, His thoughts. We have had His loving interest in His people Israel, and His tender gracious dealings with them. All this is full of the deepest, richest blessing. There can be no drawback here. When we have God and His ways before us, nothing holds back the heart's enjoyment.
Together the items say one thing: God's supply left no gap.
Verses 13 and 14 give a picture of the land of blessing and of its resources, a perfect paradise of delight and food. Even its very rocks seemed to roll out honey and oil, though apart from God's blessing rock is the most unyielding of substances. The increase of the fields said the same: curds from the herd, milk from the flock, rams of Bashan, goats, the finest of the wheat, the pure blood of the grape. All of it told of the wealth of God's provision for them.
Older translations call the first item "butter." The ESV has "curds." It was an everyday drink.
This was curdled milk (Genesis 18:8; Deuteronomy 32:14). Jael brought Sisera "butter" to drink (Judges 5:25). In Job 29:6 Job speaks of washing his steps in butter, in the days when the Almighty was with him in prosperity. The promised land was to flow with milk and honey. Curdled milk is a common drink in the East, and when mixed with honey it is very pleasant.
Translators and scholars have traced the name of the last item, the drink pressed from grapes, back to its root.
According to Professor Stuart, the word comes from a root that means to ferment. In Deuteronomy 32:14 he takes it to mean "fermentable liquor." The Septuagint has "wine," the Latin Vulgate has merum, which is unmixed wine, and De Wette has Wein, the German for wine.
God's fullness carries its own danger. One writer turns that danger straight on Christians today.
How easy it is, and yet how dangerous. God has provided this wealth of favour for all Christians, and all may share it freely. Yet the way we enjoy it can be twisted, so that it feeds our self-importance. That is the point of danger. We go on eating and feeding and indulging appetite, glad of good food and rich provision, but making it serve our own importance. Perhaps one of the greatest tests of grace is to hold high privilege and still be lowly in mind and patient with others.
Hunger keeps a person looking upward. A full table can break that habit.
The very fullness of the blessing enjoyed might make a man forget the gracious hand it came from. "Fullness of bread" had long ago been the destruction of Sodom. Trial and need wake a man up to his need of God. A man who lacks nothing can easily lose the sense that he still depends on God. In that state the gods man's own heart has invented look more attractive than the glorious God, who is our Creator, not our creature. So Israel could go after the idols of Canaan, away from Him who had given them the land.
These are gifts of the land, given to Israel. Commentators warn against reading them as a picture of the church.
Do we even need to say that the primary application of all this is to Israel? No doubt the church may learn from it and profit by it. But to apply it to the church would be a double mistake of the most serious kind. It would pull the church down from a heavenly level to an earthly one. And it would interfere, in the most unwarranted way, with the place and portion God appointed for Israel. The church, according to the mind of God, is a stranger on the earth. Her portion, her hope, her home, her inheritance, her all is heavenly.
- Giver. Up to verse 15 the song has one subject. It is God: His purposes, His counsels, His tender dealings with His people. Where His ways fill the heart, there is no drawback.
- Gift. The whole list says one thing. God's provision left Israel lacking nothing.
- Words. "Butter" here means curdled milk, an ordinary drink in that part of the world. Old translations and scholars alike read "the blood of the grape" as wine.
- Danger. Fullness is where dependence dies. Need keeps a man aware of God. Plenty lets him forget the hand that fed him, and privilege hardens into self-importance.
- Portion. These gifts belong to Israel on earth. Claiming them for the church lowers the church, whose portion is heavenly, and robs Israel of the place God appointed her.