The Lord - shall fight for you - In the Targum of Onkelos, it is, the Word of the Lord shall fight for you. In a great number of places the Targums or Chaldee paraphrases use the term מימרא דיי meimera dayeya or Yehovah, the Word of the Lord, exactly in the same way in which St. John uses the term Λογος Logos in the first chapter of his Gospel. Many instances of this have already occurred.

The Lord your God, which goeth before you,.... In a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night:

he shall fight for you; wherefore, though their enemies were greater and taller than they, yet their God was higher than the highest; and cities walled up to heaven would signify nothing to him, whose throne is in the heavens:

according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes: which is observed to encourage their faith in God; for he that wrought such wonders in Egypt for them, which their eyes, at least some of them, and their fathers, however, had seen, what is it he cannot do?

The LORD your God {s} which goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes;

(s) Declaring that to renounce our own force, and constantly to follow our calling, and depend on the Lord, is true boldness, and agreeable to God.

1:19-46 Moses reminds the Israelites of their march from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea, through that great and terrible wilderness. He shows how near they were to a happy settlement in Canaan. It will aggravate the eternal ruin of hypocrites, that they were not far from the kingdom of God. As if it were not enough that they were sure of their God before them, they would send men before them. Never any looked into the Holy Land, but they must own it to be a good land. And was there any cause to distrust this God? An unbelieving heart was at the bottom of all this. All disobedience to God's laws, and distrust of his power and goodness, flow from disbelief of his word, as all true obedience springs from faith. It is profitable for us to divide our past lives into distinct periods; to give thanks to God for the mercies we have received in each, to confess and seek the forgiveness of all the sins we can remember; and thus to renew our acceptance of God's salvation, and our surrender of ourselves to his service. Our own plans seldom avail to good purpose; while courage in the exercise of faith, and in the path of duty, enables the believer to follow the Lord fully, to disregard all that opposes, to triumph over all opposition, and to take firm hold upon the promised blessings.