Deuteronomy 32:25

25 From outside [her boundaries] the sword will make [her] childless, and from inside, terror; both [for] [the] young man [and] also the young woman, the infant [along with] the gray-headed man.

Deuteronomy 32:25 Meaning and Commentary

Deuteronomy 32:25

The sword without
Either without the city, the sword of the Roman army besieging it, which destroyed all that came out or attempted to go in; or in the streets of the city, the sword of the seditious, which destroyed multitudes among themselves:

and terror within;
within the city, on account of the sword of the Romans, and the close siege they made of it; and on account of the famine and pestilence which raged in it, and the cruelty of the seditious persons among themselves; all these filled the people with horror and terror in their houses; and even in their bedchambers, as the word signifies, they were not free from terror; yea, from the temple, and inward parts, and chambers of that, which may be referred to, terror came, that being in the hands of the seditious; they sallied out from thence, and ravaged the city, and filled all places with the dread of them; and many, no doubt, through fear died, as well as by the sword and other judgments; which it is threatened

shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling [also],
with the man of gray hairs;
none of any age or sex were spared, even those unarmed; not the young man, for his strength and promising usefulness; nor the virgin for her beauty and comeliness; nor the suckling for its innocence and tenderness; nor the aged man through any reverence of his gray hairs, or on account of the infirmities of old age, but all would be destroyed; and never was such a carnage made at the siege of anyone city in the world before or since; no less than 1,100,000 persons perished in it, as Josephus relates ^F5.

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FOOTNOTES:

F5 De Bello Jud. l. 6. c. 9. sect. 3.

Deuteronomy 32:25 In-Context

23 I will heap disasters upon them; my arrows I will spend on them.

24 [They will become] weakened by famine, and consumed by plague and bitter pestilence; and the teeth of wild animals I will send against them, with [the] poison of [the] creeping [things] in [the] dust;

25 From outside [her boundaries] the sword will make [her] childless, and from inside, terror; both [for] [the] young man [and] also the young woman, the infant [along with] the gray-headed man.

26 I thought, "I will wipe them out; {I will make people forget they ever existed}."

27 If I had not feared a provocation of [the] enemy, lest their foes might misunderstand, lest they should say, "Our hand is {triumphant}, and Yahweh [did] not do all this." '