The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten fore thine
enemies,
&c.] And by them, as they sometimes were by the Philistines
and others, before their utter destruction, when they sinned
against the Lord; and by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans:
thou shall go out one way against them, and flee seven ways
before
them;
march out against them in a body, promising themselves victory,
but be utterly routed; so that they shall flee every way they can
for their safety; see ( Deuteronomy
28:7 ) ;
and shall be removed into all the kingdoms of the
earth;
this shows that Manasseh's case ( 2
Kings 21:1-18 ) , observed ( Deuteronomy
28:15 ) ; will not strictly and entirely hold good, nor is
there any necessity to adhere closely to it; it is enough that
the things threatened and prophesied of were at one time or
another fulfilled in these people; for neither the ten tribes,
when taken captive by Shalmaneser, were carried into all the
kingdoms of the earth, only to some particular places mentioned
in ( 2 Kings
17:6 ) ; nor the two tribes by Nebuchadnezzar, who were
carried by him to Babylon, and returned from thence again at the
end of seventy years; but this was exactly fulfilled at their
last destruction by the Romans, when they were sent by them into
various countries, and have been ever since scattered about in
each of the nations of the world. And yet it must be owned that
Strabo F7, who wrote before the last
destruction of them, affirms, that it was not easy to find any
place in the world which had not received them, and was not
occupied by them.