Amos 2:10

Also I-- (Literally, "And I," I, emphatic; thus and thus did ye to Me; and thus and thus, with all the mercy from the first, did I to you,) I brought you up from the land of Egypt It is this language in which God, in the law, reminded them of that great benefit, as a motive to obedience; "I brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 5:6; Deuteronomy 6:12; only there, since God has not as yet "brought them up" into the land which He promised them, but they were yet in the wilderness, He says, "brought them forth;" here, "brought them up," as to a place of dignity, His own land.

And led you forty years through the wilderness - These are the very words of the law (Deuteronomy 29:4, (5 English), and reminded them of so many benefits during the course of those "forty years," which the law rehearsed; the daily supply of manna, the water from the rock, the deliverance from the serpents and other perils, the manifold forgivenesses. To be "led forty years through the wilderness," alone, had been no kindness, but a punishment. It was a blending of both. The abiding in the wilderness was punishment or austere mercy, keeping them back from the land which they had shown themselves unqualified to enter: God's "leading" them was, His condescending mercy. The words, taken from the law, must have re-awakened in the souls of Israelites the memory of mercies which they did not mention, how that same book relates "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; He led him about; He instructed him; He kept him as the apple of His eye. The Lord alone did lead him" Deuteronomy 32:10, Deuteronomy 32:12. In the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went until ye came to this place" Deuteronomy 1:31; or that minute tender care, mentioned in the same place (Deuteronomy 29:4, (5, English)), "your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot." But unless Israel had known the law well, the words would only have been very distantly suggestive of mercy, that it must have been well with them even in the wilderness, since God "led them." They had then the law in their memories, in Israel also , but distorted it or neglected it.