John Gill Bible Commentary

Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. This sometimes is the case of good men, who leave widows and fatherless children, whom the Lord shows mercy to; being the Father of the fatherless, and the Judge of the widow, Psa 68:5, but sometimes it is threatened and comes as a judgment, when the Lord shows no mercy and favour to them, Exo 22:24. And this is the case here, which very probably was literally fulfilled in Judas, who might have a wife and children; since it looks as if the other apostles had, and certain it is that one of them had a wife, even Peter, in the times of Christ; see Co1 9:5. And this was verified in the people of the Jews; whom the Lord divorced from himself, and wrote a "loammi" upon them, and left them as orphans and fatherless, Hos 1:9. This will never be the case of Christ's people, or the Christian church, Joh 14:18, though it will be of the antichristian one, Rev 18:7. . Psalms 109:10 psa 109:10 psa 109:10 psa 109:10Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg,.... Wander from place to place, begging their bread: this is denied of the children of good men in David's time, Psa 37:25 yet was threatened to the children of Eli, Sa1 2:36 and was very likely literally true of the children of Judas; and was certainly the case of multitudes of the children of the Jews, the posterity of them that crucified Christ, at the time of their destruction by the Romans; when great numbers were dispersed, and wandered about in various countries, as vagabonds, begging their bread from door to door; which is reckoned (a) by them a great affliction, and very distressing. Let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places; either describing, as Kimchi thinks, the miserable cottages, forlorn and desolate houses, in which they lived, and from whence they went out to everyone that passed by, to ask relief of them; or it may be rendered, because of their desolate places (b); or, "after them"; so the Targum, "after their desolation was made"; when their grand house was left desolate, their temple, as our Lord said it should, and was, Mat 23:38, and all their other houses in Jerusalem and in Judea; then were they obliged to seek their bread of others elsewhere, and by begging. The Syriac version wants this verse. (a) Mifchar Hapeninim apud Buxtorf. Florileg. Heb. p. 262, 263. (b) So De Dieu, Gejerus, and some in Michaelis.