My Notes
Authors
John Calvin - Commentaries
**For their vine is of the vine of Sodom. I think it was far from the intention of Moses, as some make it to be, to refer to the punishment which the Israelites deserved; but that he rather inveighs against their corrupted morals, and obstinate disposition. But metaphorically he calls them an offshoot from the vine of Sodom and Gomorrah, inasmuch as they resemble in their nature both those nations, as much as if they had sprung from them, just as grafts of the vine produce fruits similar to the stocks from which they are taken. God complains by Isaiah that, when he looked for good and sweet grapes from His vineyard, _it __brought forth wild grapes. _(Isaiah 5:2 .) And also by Jeremiah that, when He had planted a trustworthy and genuine seed, it was turned into the branches of a strange vine, (Jeremiah 2:22 ;) but Moses goes further here, that the people was not merely a degenerate vine, bun poisonous, and producing nothing but what was deadly; and therefore he adds, not only that _their clusters _were _bitter, _but that their wine was _the poison of dragons and asps; _whereby he signifies that nothing worse or more abominable than that nation could be imagined.