What does it mean that the Israelites were full and had grown fat (Deuteronomy 31:20)?

Of this, Moses was quite aware. In the very next chapter to that from which his words are quoted, we find that the Lord appeared and said to him, "Behold thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people shall rise up and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them" (Deut. 31:16). They had already broken one covenant of works, in token of which Moses brake the two tables of the law, which were in his hands, when he came down from the mount (see Ex. 32:19). With all unchanged nature, and placed under a similar covenant of works, what could be expected now? What but the results which the Lord assures Moses, and Moses assures the people, would actually ensue? "Now therefore, write ye this song for you, and teach it the children of Israel; put it in their mouths that this song maybe a witness for me against the children of Israel. For when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware to their fathers, that flows with milk and honey; and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn to other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my covenant. And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed; for I know their imagination which they go about, even now, before I have brought them into the land which I sware" (Deut. 31:19-21).

Can anything be more solemn or decisive than these last words? God declared to Moses, that instead of choosing life that they might live, the people would turn to other gods, provoke Him, and break His covenant; and He speaks of these future acts of evil, as only the display of what He knew to be at the then present time working in their hearts. "I know their imagination" etc. Hence, Moses said to them, "Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God." Why? That they might choose life, and live by keeping it? Nay, but "That it may be there for a witness against thee." "For I know thy rebellion," he proceeds, "and thy stiff neck; behold, whilst I am yet alive with you this day, you have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death" (ver. 26, 27)? "For I know," says he again to them, "that after my death you will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands" (ver. 29). Surely we need no further answer to those who use Moses' words to prove that salvation depends on human will. If it did, who could be saved?

Therefore God provided a song for Israel, seen in the first 43 verses of chapter 32. Moses was to write it down for Israel to learn (v.19). When God has brought them into the land and they have become well fed and wealthy, turning to idols and provoking God, then this song would testify against them. If learning it by memory, they would remember it, and its words would serve at least to embarrass them when they acted in disobedience (vs.20-21). It is amazing how painstakingly God sought to impress on Israel from every angle their responsibility to Him, though He knew perfectly well that they would rebel.

(3) But, alas! then as now, and now as then, the very fullness of the blessing enjoyed might cause forgetfulness of the gracious hand from which it came. "Fullness of bread" had of old been the destruction of Sodom. Trial and necessity awake the consciousness of man's need of God, while without want he may lose easily the sense of his still existing dependence. Egypt, the type of the world away from Him, we have seen to be fed by her unfailing river. Mercies thus may through our pride and willfulness become that plagues shall have to become our mercies. In this condition the gods which man's own heart has devised are more attractive than the glorious God who is our Creator, not our creature; and Israel can go after the idols of Canaan — of the nations they have seen driven out before Jehovah — away from Him who had given them these for a possession.

At verse 15, we reach a very different note in the song of Moses. Up to this point, we have had before us God and His actings, His purposes, His counsels, His thoughts, His loving interest in His people Israel, His tender gracious dealings with them. All this is full of deepest, richest blessing. There is — there can be no drawback here. When we have God and His ways before us, there is no hindrance to the heart's enjoyment. All is perfection — absolute, divine perfection, and as we dwell upon it, we are filled with wonder, love and praise.

But there is the human side; and here alas! all is failure and disappointment. Thus at the fifteenth verse of our chapter we read, "But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked" — what a very full and suggestive statement! How vividly it presents, in its brief compass, the moral history of Israel! — "thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed to devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee."

There is a solemn voice in all this for the writer and the reader. We are, each of us, in danger of treading the moral path indicated by the words just quoted. Surrounded, on all hands, by the rich and varied mercies of God, we are apt to make use of them to nourish a spirit of self-complacency. We make use of the gifts to shut out the Giver. In a word, we, too, like Israel, wax fat and kick. We forget God. We lose the sweet and precious sense of His presence, and of His perfect sufficiency, and turn to other objects as Israel did to false gods. How often do we forget the Rock that begat us, the God that formed us, the Lord that redeemed us! And all this is so much the more inexcusable in us, inasmuch as our privileges are so much higher than theirs. We are brought into a relationship and a position of which Israel knew absolutely nothing; our privileges and blessings are of the very highest order; it is our privilege to have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; we are the objects of that perfect love which stopped not short of introducing us into a position in which it can be said of us, "As he [Christ] is, so are we in this world." Nothing could exceed the blessedness of this; even divine love itself could go no further than this. It is not merely that the love of God has been manifested to us in the gift and the death of His only-begotten and well-beloved Son, and in giving us His Spirit; but it has been made perfect with us by placing us in the very same position as that blessed One on the throne of God.

(4) Then the song turns from past to future, but which is seen as the past, clear in the vision of God. Jeshurun grew fat and kicked: God's loved, upright one became rebellious in prosperity — a strange, common case — and gave up his Maker, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. Then the heart estranged from Him turned to those that were His opposites. Strange gods came in, with their abominations, gods newly invented replaced Him who had brought them forth, — a thing continually repeated since, and under every imaginable form.

But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked" (v.15). Jeshurun means "upright," which was Israel's proper character, but they forsook this when they became wealthy. This is prophetic of their tenure in the land, when God prospered them by His pure grace. Taking ungodly advantage of their prosperity, they forsook the God who made them, and scornfully esteemed the Rock of their salvation. Of course this Rock is Christ, who, when He came, was scorned and rejected by His own nation, for they had chosen other gods, provoking God to anger by their abominable idolatries (v.16). This was not merely worshiping material things, but was sacrificing to demons (v 17). Ignorant as they were of such "gods." they were in a fit state to be deceived by them. They did not learn this from their fathers, so no doubt they felt they were advancing beyond the wisdom of their fathers. Such pride will make people easy victims of deception.

The meaning of Jeshurun is not perhaps definitely obtainable. It appears to lie between "upright ones," and "beloved of Jehovah." We start thus with God's thoughts of His people, the beloved of His heart, qualified to be here on earth in uprightness in full consistency with their calling. Every true believer in Christ is not only redeemed from all condemnation and secured for ultimate glory, but is set up with a new life and nature, the work of God's holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit Himself indwelling, to enable him to be consistent with all that God teaches him concerning Christ.

"But" — begins our verse, — "but Jeshurun waxed fat." Evidently God had not failed Israel as to abundance of supply. Verses 13 and 14 give a picture of the land of blessing and of its resources, a perfect Elysium of delight and food. Even its very rocks — usually (apart from God's blessing) the most unyielding of substances — seemed to roll out honey and oil; while increase of the fields, butter of kine, milk of sheep, rams of Bashan, goats, fat of kidneys of wheat, the pure blood of the grape, all told of the wealth of God's provision for them.

However, when blessed with all this abundance, then Israel ought to be deeply thankful to the Lord, remembering that they were dependent utterly on His great goodness (v.10). The danger would be present of their forgetting the Lord because they were prospering. The possession of material things might become such an object that God's goodness and God's commandments would be forgotten (v.11).

When they found food plentiful in the land, when they built beautiful houses, when their herds and flocks multiplied, their silver and gold and other possessions increased, then their hearts might be lifted up in such self-complacency that they should forget the Lord who had brought them from the hard bondage of Egypt (vs.12-14). Could they forget that God had led them in mercy through the great and terrible wilderness, with its serpents and scorpions, bringing water from the rock for their thirst, feeding them with manna (vs.15-16)?

Let us notice here, as ever henceforth, the victim is of the flock or herd, or what at least is not the object of pursuit or capture; which plainly would not harmonize with the fact of man's lost condition, or with the voluntary offering of Him who freely came to do the will of God. The blood of no wild creature could flow in atonement for the soul of man. The precise commandment as to this comes indeed much later, but to it from the first both Abel's and every other accepted sacrifice conform. Of blood no mention is made either here; of the fat there is: "And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof;" — the fat being that in which the good condition of the animal made itself apparent. Fat is always in Scripture the symbol of a prosperous condition, although, it may be, of such temporal prosperity as might result in an opposite state of soul. "Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked," says the lawgiver in his last prophetic "song;" "thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness: then he forsook God that made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation." Connected with this is the Psalmist's description of the wicked: "They are inclosed in their own fat; with their mouth they speak proudly." Then by an easy gradation of thought: "Their heart is as fat as grease." Where offered to God, fat is the symbol of that spiritual well-being which expresses itself, not in the energy of self-will, but of devotedness. Even in the sin-offering afterward, where burnt upon the ground, the fat is always therefore reserved for the altar; but of this elsewhere.

In Deuteronomy 32:15 God said, "But Jeshurin (meaning 'the righteous people') waxed fat, and kicked..... then he forsook God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation". What it simply means is that once the nation got all the blessings that God gave to them, once they entered into the land they had the vineyards, the cornfields, the minerals, the supplies of water. After they had everything that God gave them in His sovereign grace and mercy, they forgot Him. They forgot the One who had given them all these blessings and they lightly esteemed the God of their salvation. Was it possible that they could ever forget the bondage of Egypt? Could they ever forget the miracle of the Red Sea? Could they ever forget the wonder of crossing the Jordan, the destruction of Jericho, all the other blessings? Could they forget these things? Indeed they did. They forgot God, and they lightly esteemed the Rock of their salvation. This is the kind of condition that Eglon represents in his bloated condition before God.