Deuteronomy 29:24

24 they and indeed all the nations will wonder, "Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused this great display of 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 The next generation, your children who rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who comes from a distant country, will see the devastation of that land and the afflictions with which the Lord has afflicted it—

23 all its soil burned out by sulfur and salt, nothing planted, nothing sprouting, unable to support any vegetation, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his fierce anger—

24 they and indeed all the nations will wonder, "Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused this great display of anger?"

25 They will conclude, "It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

26 They turned and served other gods, worshiping them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them;