Deuteronomy 32:7

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) The fourfold division of this verse is manifest.

Benson Commentary

Deuteronomy 32:7. The days of old — The events of ancient days or former ages, and thou wilt find that I had a respect unto thee not only in Abraham’s time, but long before it.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

32:7-14 Moses gives particular instances of God's kindness and concern for them. The eagle's care for her young is a beautiful emblem of Christ's love, who came between Divine justice and our guilty souls, and bare our sins in his own body on the tree. And by the preached gospel, and the influences of the Holy Spirit, He stirs up and prevails upon sinners to leave Satan's bondage. In ver. 13,14, are emblems of the conquest believers have over their spiritual enemies, sin, Satan, and the world, in and through Christ. Also of their safety and triumph in him; of their happy frames of soul, when they are above the world, and the things of it. This will be the blessed case of spiritual Israel in every sense in the latter day.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Hath bought thee - Rather perhaps, "hath acquired thee for His own," or "possessed thee:" compare the expression "a peculiar people," margin "a purchased people," in 1 Peter 2:9.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6. is not he thy father that hath bought thee—or emancipated thee from Egyptian bondage.

and made thee—advanced the nation to unprecedented and peculiar privileges.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The days of old, i.e. the history and events of ancient days or former ages, and thou wilt find that I had a respect unto thee, not only in Abraham’s time, but long before it. Compare Jeremiah 2:20.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations,.... That went before the times of Christ, and the Jews' rejection of him, and observe the instances of divine goodness to them; as in the time of the Maccabees, whom God raised up as deliverers of them, when oppressed by the Syrians and others; and in the time of the Babylonish captivity, how they were delivered out of it; in the times of David and Solomon, when they enjoyed great prosperity; and in the times of the judges, by whom they were often saved out of the hands of their enemies; and in the times of Moses and Joshua, how they were led, by the one out of Egypt and through the wilderness, and by the other into the land of Canaan; and thus might they be led on higher, to the provision and reservation of the good land for them in the times of Noah and his sons, which they are referred to in Deuteronomy 32:8, and in all these times, days, years, and generations, they might consider what notices were given of the Messiah, the rock of salvation, rejected by them; not only by the prophets since the captivity of Babylon and in it; but before it by Isaiah and others, and before them by David, and Solomon his son, by Moses and by all the prophets, from the beginning of the world; all which would serve to aggravate their sin in refusing him: Jarchi's note on the passage is,""remember"--"consider"--to know what is to come; for it is in his hand (or power) to do you good, and cause you to inherit the days of the Messiah, and the world to come:"

ask thy father, and he will show thee; either their immediate parents, father for fathers, or such as were their seniors, or rather Abraham, their father, is meant; whom they might inquire of, not by personal application to him, but by consulting the writings of Moses, and observe what is there related of him; how he was called out of Chaldea to go into the land of Canaan, his seed was after to inherit; and how he had an express grant of that land to his posterity, and where they might be shown and see the prophecy delivered to him of their being in Egypt, and coming out from thence; and what he knew of the Messiah, whose day he saw, and rejoiced at, now rejected by them his offspring:

thy elders, and they will tell thee; not their present elders who rejected the Messiah, but those in ages past; the elders of Israel, who saw the glory of the God of Israel, and were present at the covenant made at Horeb, Exodus 24:9; or rather the sons of Noah, by whom the earth was divided, to which Deuteronomy 32:8 refers; or the ancient writers, the writers of the Scriptures: Jarchi, by "father", understands the prophets, and by "elders", the wise men: the Targum of Jonathan is,"read in the books of the law and they will teach you, and in the books of the prophets and they will tell you.''

Geneva Study Bible

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

7. Remember] Heb. Sg.; Sam., LXX Pl.

days of old … generations] One of many signs of the distance of the generation to which the Song is addressed from the time of the Wilderness and the entrance to the Promised Land.

that he shew thee … that they tell thee] So the Heb.

7–14. Origin and Progress of Israel

7 Remember the days of old,

Scan the years, age upon age;

Ask of thy sire that he shew thee,

Thine elders, that they may tell thee.

8 When the Highest gave nations their heritage,

When He sundered the children of men,

He set the bounds of the peoples

By the tale of Israel’s sons (?)

9 For the Lord’s own lot is Jacob,

Israel the scale of His heritage.

Deuteronomy 32:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"Remember the days of old, consider the years of the past generations: ask thy father, that he may make known to thee; thine old men, that they may tell it to thee!" With these words Moses summons the people to reflect upon what the Lord had done to them. The days of old (עולם), and years of generation and generation, i.e., years through which one generation after another had lived, are the times of the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, including the pre-Mosaic times, and also the immediate post-Mosaic, when Israel had entered into the possession of Canaan. These times are described by Moses as a far distant past, because he transported himself in spirit to the "latter days" (Deuteronomy 31:29), when the nation would have fallen away from its God, and would have been forsaken and punished by God in consequence. "Days of eternity" are times which lie an eternity behind the speaker, not necessarily, however, before all time, but simply at a period very far removed from the present, and of which even the fathers and old men could only relate what had been handed down by tradition to them.