(1) The rule that a eunuch should not enter into the congregation was doubtless intended to prevent the Israelitish rulers from making eunuchs of their brethren the children of Israel. As a set off to this apparent harshness towards the man who had been thus treated, we must read Isaiah 56:3-4, in which a special promise is given to the eunuchs that keep God’s Sabbaths and take hold of His covenant. God will give to them within His house and within His walls “a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters—an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” As a special calamity it was foretold to Hezekiah that some of his descendants should be eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon. But Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in whom this prophecy was fulfilled, have ennobled the “children that are of their sort” for evermore.
We have no means of knowing whether the eunuchs that were in the service of the kings of Israel or Judah (1 Samuel 8:15; 1 Kings 22:9; 2 Kings 8:6; 2 Kings 9:32, &c.) were Israelites by birth or not. Ebedmelech, the Ethiopian, who received a special blessing from Jeremiah (Jeremiah 39:15-18), was a foreigner, and so very possibly were most, if not all, of his kind in Israel.
As to the second clause of this verse, it must be remembered that circumcision was the sign of the covenant of Jehovah; mutilation a form of heathen self-devotion. (See Galatians 5:12, Revised New Testament, Margin, and Bishop Lightfoot’s comment on that place.) St. Paul’s words in Galatians receive a double meaning from this law. By doing what he refers to, they would cut themselves off from the congregation of the Lord. Rashi also gives another meaning, which would connect the precept with Leviticus 15:2.

(2) A bastard shall not enter.—Such a person would not, even now, be circumcised by the Jews, or permitted to marry an Israelitish woman, or be buried with his people; therefore he was excluded from the covenant. It is manifest how efficacious would be the enforcement of this law also in preserving the purity of family life.

(3) An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter. According to Rashi, “shall not marry an Israelitish woman.” It must be remembered that the children, according to Jewish law, follow the father, not the mother. The case of Ruth would not, therefore, be touched by this precept.

(4) Because they met you not with bread and with water.—We learn incidentally from this passage how the Moabites and the Ammonites requited the forbearance shown them by the Israelites (Deuteronomy 2:9; Deuteronomy 2:19; Deuteronomy 2:29). No one not acquainted with the details of Israel’s intercourse with these people on their journey could have written thus.
Because they hired against thee Balaam.—See Numbers 22 and Numbers 31:16, and Numbers 25.

(5) Because the Lord thy God loved thee.—The contrast between what He says to Israel in this book and what He said by Balaam is very striking. (See on Deuteronomy 31:16.)

(7) Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite . . . an Egyptian.—The contrast between these and the Moabite and Ammonite is drawn rather well by Rashi in this passace. “Learn here,” he says, “that he who makes a man to sin, treats him worse than he who kills-him; for he that kills, kills only in this world, but he who causes him to sin, banishes him both from this world and from the world to come. Edom, therefore who met them with the sword (Numbers 21:18; Numbers 21:20) they must not abhor; nor, again, Egypt, that would have drowned them (Exodus 1:22); but those who made them to sin are to be abhorred of them, because of the counsel wherewith they counselled them to cause them to sin.” The counsel of Balaam and the whoredoms of Moab are referred to; the Midianites who joined in this effort had been chastised already (Numbers 31).

(8) The children that are begotten of them From this passage it is clear that it was not only from Egypt that a “mixed multitude” came up with Israel. It seems to have been impossible to prevent some inter-marriages between Edom, Moab, and Israel when the Israelites passed through their land. Such a precept is suitable to the circumstances of Moses’ time. It would be less necessary when the bulk of the people had gone over the Jordan and left Moab and Edom far behind.

(17) Whore and sodomite seem both intended to be taken in the sense in which they belonged to the temples of Baal and Ashtaroth, of persons dedicated to impurity.

(18) The hire of a whore.—Even a lamb or a kid might not be sacrificed for them, if obtained as the wages of sin (Genesis 38:17).
The price of a dog.—The ass might be redeemed with a lamb, and the lamb could be sacrificed. The dog could not be treated thus. Yet “the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.” But there is a “dog that turns to his own vcmit again,” and of these it is written that “without are dogs and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie” (Revelation 22:15).

(21) When thou shalt vow . . . thou shalt not be slack . . .—The three yearly feasts are mentioned by Rashi and the Rabbis as occasions for the payment of vows. (See 1 Samuel 1:21.) This precept is cited in Ecclesiastes 5:4, but with sufficient verbal variation to prevent its being called a quotation.

(24) When thou comest into thy neighbour’s vineyard.—Rashi tries to limit both this and the following precept to the labourer engaged in gathering the vintage or the harvest, when vessels are used and sickles employed. But the plain meaning will stand, and is accepted by our Lord in the Gospel. The objection made to His disciples was not that they plucked their neighbour’s corn, but that they did it on the Sabbath (a kind of harvesting, and therefore unlawful according to the scribes).