Deuteronomy 7:20, commentary and pictures

Deuteronomy 7:20 belongs to Moses's instruction in Deuteronomy 4-8, especially chapter 7, showing what God required of ancient Israel that they might be a holy people to Himself. Keeping His commandments, statutes, and judgments is tied to His covenant mercy, love, blessing, multiplication, prosperity, and the taking away of all sickness. Apart from that obedience and covenant-care context, the instruction gives no separate explanation of the hornet itself.

The hornet promise means that when Israel first prepared to enter Canaan, God pledged, on condition of their obedience, to go before them and send the hornet among the inhabitants until those left and hiding themselves were driven out and destroyed. At that first opportunity the nations of Canaan were not yet generally alarmed and had made little preparation to resist, so the conquest would have been less difficult. After Israel failed to advance, they later faced alert, powerful foes and well-prepared armies.

The same words are also addressed to God's people today and are to be read with profit now. This is because the day of God's great final review is near when the people of this world must stand before the Judge of all the earth to answer for their deeds, and because the present is the time of investigation when every character will have been investigated and every case decided for eternity. Remembering how God led Israel forty years in the wilderness to humble and prove them and know what was in their hearts calls for keeping His commandments to walk in His ways and fear Him. That leading included humbling them and suffering them to hunger and feeding them with manna to teach that man lives by every word from the mouth of the Lord, preserving their clothing and feet from wearing out, and chastening them as a man chastens his son.