Deuteronomy 29:24

24 And all the nations will say, '{Why} has Yahweh done {such a thing} to this land? What [caused] the fierceness of this great anger?'

Deuteronomy 29:24 Meaning and Commentary

Deuteronomy 29:24

Even all nations shall say
For the destruction of this land, and the people of it, would be, as it has been, so very great and awful, and so very remarkable and surprising, that the fame of it would be heard among all the nations of the world, as it has been; who, upon hearing the sad report of it, would ask the following questions:

wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land?
so distinguished from all others for the fruitfulness and pleasantness of it; the people, the inhabitants of which, he chose, above all others, to be a special and peculiar people; and where he had a temple built for him, and where he had his residence, and worship used to be given unto him:

what [meaneth] the heat of this great anger?
what is the reason of his stirring up his fierce wrath, and causing it to burn in so furious a manner? surely it must be something very horrible and provoking indeed!

Deuteronomy 29:24 In-Context

22 "And the next generation, [that is], your children who will rise [up] after you, and the foreigner who will come from a distant land, when they will see the plagues of that land and its diseases that Yahweh has inflicted upon it, will say,

23 'All its land is brimstone and salt left by fire, {none of its land will be sown}, and it will not make plants sprout out and it will not grow any vegetation; [it is] as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Adman and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overturned in his anger and in his wrath.'

24 And all the nations will say, '{Why} has Yahweh done {such a thing} to this land? What [caused] the fierceness of this great anger?'

25 And they will say, '[It is] because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, which he {made} with them {when he brought them out} from the land of Egypt.

26 And they went and served other gods and bowed down to them, gods whom they did not know them and he had not allotted to them.

Footnotes

• [a]. Literally "On what [basis]"
• [b]. Literally "so"