Deuteronomy 32:42
I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh, of the blood of the slain and of the captivity, of the bare head of the enemies.
Open Deuteronomy 32:42 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Inebriabo sagittas meas sanguine, et gladius meus devorabit carnes ; de cruore occisorum et de captivitate, nudati inimicorum capitis.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- μεθύσω τὰ βέλη μου ἀφ᾽ αἵματος τραυματιῶν καὶ αἰχμαλωσίας, ἀπὸ κεφαλῆς ἀρχόντων ἐχθρῶν.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- אַשְׁכִּ֤יר חִצַּי֙ מִדָּ֔ם וְחַרְבִּ֖י תֹּאכַ֣ל בָּשָׂ֑ר מִדַּ֤ם חָלָל֙ וְשִׁבְיָ֔ה מֵרֹ֖אשׁ פַּרְע֥וֹת אוֹיֵֽב
Haydock's commentary
Enemies. I will tear the crown from off their head. Chaldean, I will destroy the king, as well as the meanest captives. Protestants, "from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy." At the very first I will completely destroy them. (Haydock)
I will punish them for the slaughter and captivity of my people, whom they have shaved, as a mark of their servile condition. (Menochius)
Their bare head, or vain counsels, will be detected and punished. (Worthington)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Clement of Alexandria The Instructor, Chapter VIII. Against Those Who Think that What is Just is Not Good
God, then, is good. And the Lord speaks many a time and oft before He proceeds to act. “For my arrows,” He says, “will make an end of them; they shall be consumed with hunger, and be eaten by birds; and there shall be incurable tetanic incurvature. I will send the teeth of wild beasts upon them, with the rage of serpents creeping on the earth. Without, the sword shall make them childless; and out of their chambers shall be fear.” For the Divine Being is not angry in the way that some think; but often restrains, and always exhorts humanity, and shows what ought to be done. And this is a good device, to terrify lest we sin. “For the fear of the Lord drives away sins, and he that is without fear cannot be justified,” says the Scripture. And God does not inflict punishment from wrath, but for the ends of justice; since it is not expedient that justice should be neglected on our account. …
St Gregory the Great The Book of Pastoral Rule, How those are to be admonished who decline the office of preaching out of too great humility, and those who seize on it with precipitate haste
( Admonition 26.) Differently to be admonished are those who, though able to preach worthily, are afraid by reason of excessive humility, and those whom imperfection or age forbids to preach, and yet precipitancy impells. For those who, though able to preach with profit, still shrink back through excessive humility are to be admonished to gather from consideration of a lesser matter how faulty they are in a greater one. For, if they were to hide from their indigent neighbours money which they possessed themselves they would undoubtedly shew themselves to be promoters of their calamity. Let them perceive, then, in what guilt those are implicated who, in withholding the word of preaching from their sinning brethren, hide away the remedies of life from dying souls. …