Deuteronomy 32:21

moved … to jealousy See on Deuteronomy 32:16. Mark the antitheses: no-god (lo"-"el), no-people (lo"--am, as hitherto outside the nations known and to be reckoned with, by Israel, as unfit to serve any Divine purpose); and vanities(lit. breaths, or as we should say, bubbles, so in Jer. of the heathen gods, Deuteronomy 8:19, etc.) and foolish(nabal, chosen perhaps both because of its probable root-meaning fading, worthless, parallel to vanities, and because it was used in a religious sense, godless, infidel). See Paul's application of the v. in Romans 10:19.

22  For a fire has flared from my wrath,

And burned to the lowest Shĕ"ól,

It devours earth and her increase,

It flames round the roots of the hills.

23  I will sweep up evils upon them,

Against them exhaust mine arrows.

24  Drained by famine, devoured by fever (?)

And poisonous pestilence (?),

The teeth of brute beasts will I send them,

With venom of things that crawl in the dust.

25  Abroad shall the sword bereave,

And terror be in the chambers

As well the youth as the maiden,

The suckling and gray-headed man.