15 Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel, and the ground which you have given us, as you swore to our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey."
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Look down from thy holy habitation. Whilst they are commanded to offer their prayers and supplications, that God would bless the land, on this condition, that they had not defiled themselves by any sacrilege, at the same time they are reminded, on the other hand, that God's blessing was not else to be hoped for. Meanwhile the expression is remarkable, "Bless the land which thou hast given us, a land that floweth with milk and honey:" for we infer from hence that the land was not so much fertile by nature, as because God daily watered it by His secret blessing to make it so.
Look down from thy holy habitation, from heaven,.... This is a prayer of the person that makes the above declaration annexed to it, desiring that God would vouchsafe to look with an eye of love, complacency, and delight, upon him and upon all his people, from heaven his holy habitation, though they were on earth, and unholy persons in themselves, and especially if compared with him; see Isaiah 57:15,
and bless thy people Israel; with blessings temporal and spiritual:
and the land which thou hast given us; with fertility and plenty of all good things, that it might be
as thou swarest to our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey; See Gill on Deuteronomy 26:9.
Look down - After that solemn profession of their obedience to God's commands, they are taught to pray for God's blessing whereby they are instructed how vain and ineffectual the prayers of unrighteous or disobedient persons are.
*More commentary available at chapter level.