The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten fore thine enemies,
&c.] And by them, as they sometimes were by the Philistines and others, before their utter destruction, when they sinned against the Lord; and by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans:
thou shall go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before
them;
march out against them in a body, promising themselves victory, but be utterly routed; so that they shall flee every way they can for their safety; see ( Deuteronomy 28:7 ) ;
and shall be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth;
this shows that Manasseh's case ( 2 Kings 21:1-18 ) , observed ( Deuteronomy 28:15 ) ; will not strictly and entirely hold good, nor is there any necessity to adhere closely to it; it is enough that the things threatened and prophesied of were at one time or another fulfilled in these people; for neither the ten tribes, when taken captive by Shalmaneser, were carried into all the kingdoms of the earth, only to some particular places mentioned in ( 2 Kings 17:6 ) ; nor the two tribes by Nebuchadnezzar, who were carried by him to Babylon, and returned from thence again at the end of seventy years; but this was exactly fulfilled at their last destruction by the Romans, when they were sent by them into various countries, and have been ever since scattered about in each of the nations of the world. And yet it must be owned that Strabo F7, who wrote before the last destruction of them, affirms, that it was not easy to find any place in the world which had not received them, and was not occupied by them.