Deuteronomy 32:36

Hebrew Bible

34 “Is this not stored up with me?” says the Lord, “Is it not sealed up in my storehouses? 35 I will get revenge and pay them back at the time their foot slips; for the day of their disaster is near, and the impending judgment is rushing upon them!” 36 The Lord will judge his people, and will have compassion on his servants;62 when he sees that their power has disappeared, and that no one is left, whether confined or set free. 37 He will say, “Where are their gods, the rock in whom they sought security, 38 who ate the best of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise and help you; let them be your refuge!

2 Maccabees 7:6

Deuterocanon

4 These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on. 5 When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, 6 "The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song that bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, "And he will have compassion on his servants.' " 7 After the first brother had died in this way, they brought forward the second for their sport. They tore off the skin of his head with the hair, and asked him, "Will you eat rather than have your body punished limb by limb?" 8 He replied in the language of his ancestors and said to them, "No." Therefore he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done.

 Notes and References

"... The vocabulary that the author introduces resurfaces in the words of the seven brothers and their mother. The last son to die employs all of the author’s distinctive vocabulary in the succinct interpretation of his people’s suffering that he voices to Antiochus IV Epiphanes (7:32–33, 37–38; compare 5:17–20; 6:12–17). His solidarity with all Jews derives from a shared consciousness that their suffering is the consequence of their sins (7:32). He foresees the Lord soon becoming reconciled to the Jewish nation precisely because the martyrdom, which he and his brothers endure for upholding the ancestral laws, will mercifully put an end to God’s wrath (7:33, 37–38). The six brothers and their mother articulate the foundations for this depiction of retributive justice as constituting the advent of divine mercy, by introducing their reflections with the only scriptural quotation in 2 Maccabees, “The Lord will have compassion on his servants” (7:6; Deuteronomy 32:36). In the song of Moses, this verse describes the Lord embracing the offspring of Jacob after having rejected them in response to their covenant infidelity. By citing one verse, the author directs attention to ingredients in the larger message that refer to the people’s foolishness that had provoked the Lord’s anger and then to the Lord’s capacity to heal after wounding and to give life after allowing death (Deuteronomy 32:19–42). The last son to die introduces his discourse by reinforcing his allegiance to the law of Moses (7:30) ..."

Duggan, Michael W. "2 Maccabees" in Oegema, Gerbern S. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 169-187) Oxford University Press, 2021

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