Vespasian and his son Titus came from Rome to conquer the Land of Israel and destroy Jerusalem and the Second Temple.  The awful conditions described though verse 57 took place during the siege of Jerusalem.

 

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Deuteronomy 28:49

The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand

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Rambam
“Vespasian and his son Titus came from Rome to conquer the Land of Israel and destroy Jerusalem and the Second Temple.  The awful conditions described though verse 57 took place during the siege of Jerusalem.” (History through a Jewish lens: The War of Tisha B’av)

“Trajan, being sent for by his wife to subdue the Jews, determined to come in ten days, and came in five; he came and found them (the Jews) busy in the law on that verse, “the Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far”, &c. he said unto them, what are ye busy in? they answered him, so and so; he replied to them, this is the man (meaning himself) who thought to come in ten days, and came in five; and he surrounded them with his legions, and slew them:” (T. Hieros. Succah, fol. 55. 2.)

“from the time that the temple was destroyed, the wise men, and sons of nobles, were put to shame, and they covered their heads; liberal men were reduced to poverty; and men of violence and calumny prevailed; and there were none that expounded, or inquired, or asked. R. Elezer the great, said, from the time the sanctuary were destroyed, the wise men began to be like Scribes, and the Scribes like to the Chazans, (or sextons that looked after the synagogues,) and the Chazans like to the common people, and the common people grew worse and worse, and there were none that inquired and asked;” (Misn. Sotah, c. 9. sect. 15.)

Devarim/Deuteronomy 28:49-50:   HaShem will carry against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as an eagle will swoop, a nation whose language you will not understand, a brazen nation that will not be respectful to the old nor gracious to the young. 

“Rambam comments on Deuteronomy 28:49 that Vespasian and his son Titus came from Rome to conquer the Land of Israel and destroy Jerusalem and the Second Temple.  The awful conditions described though verse 57 took place during the siege of Jerusalem.  A yeshiva student studying these lines in Warsaw on the night of Wednesday, August 30, 1939, would have read Rambam in the Hebrew, saying exactly what I quoted you.  However, if he had time to follow the reading of the Torah in shul (synagogue) on September 2 and could concentrate upon it, instead of the screaming of the Luftwaffe overhead, he might have had a very different comprehension of these same lines. ” History through a Jewish lens: The War of Tisha B’av)

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Robert Jamieson (1871)
“49. The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far–the invasion of the Romans–“they came from far.” The soldiers of the invading army were taken from France, Spain, and Britain–then considered “the end of the earth.” Julius Severus, the commander, afterwards Vespasian and Hadrian, left Britain for the scene of contest. Moreover, the ensign on the standards of the Roman army was “an eagle”; and the dialects spoken by the soldiers of the different nations that composed that army were altogether unintelligible to the Jews. (in loc.)

Keith on the Prophecies
“The commonwealth of Israel from its establishment to its dissolution subsisted for more than fifteen hundred years. In delivering their law, Moses assumed more (much more) than the authority of a human legislator; for he asserted that he was invested with a divine commission; and he who founded their government foretold, notwithstanding the intervening of so many centuries, the precise manner of its overthrow.

“While they were yet wanderers in the wilderness, without a city and without a home, Moses threatened them with the destruction of their cities and the desolation of their country. Even while they were viewing for the first time the land of Palestine, and victorious and triumphant, they were about to possess it, he represented the scene of desolation that it would present to their vanquished and enslaved posterity, on their final departure from it. Ere they themselves had entered it as enemies, he describes those enemies by whom their descendants were to be subjugated and dispossessed; though they were to arise from a very distant region, and though they did not appear till after a millenary and a half of years: “The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young’ etc. (quoting Deut. 28:49-52).

“Each particular of this prophecy has met its full completion. The remote situation of the Romans, the rapidity of their march, the very emblem of their arms, their unknown language and warlike appearance, the indiscriminate cruelty they manifested toward old and young, could not have been represented in more descriptive terms. The Roman Generals, Vespasian, Adrian and Julius Severus, removed with parts of their armies from Britain to Palestine, the extreme points of the Roman world.”

Philip Mauro
“By pondering the Scriptures cited above the reader will be enabled to perceive the truly immense significance of the execution of God’s long deferred, though oft threatened judgments and the pouring out of His wrath upon that nation which He had chosen for Himself, and with which He had dealt for a millennium and a half as He had never dealt with any other. For this was the nation He had so marvellously delivered out of Egypt; the nation to which He had given His holy law amidst the terrors of Sinai; the nation He had brought into the land of promise, driving out before them nations greater and mightier than they; to which He had sent His prophets with warning and with promises; and to which, last of all, He sent His only Son. And if one but calls to mind the many prophecies, beginning with Deuteronomy 28:49-68, that pointed to and were fulfilled in that stupendous event, (the destruction of Jerusalem) he will surely realize something of its unique place and importance in the scheme of God’s dealings with mankind.” (Gospel of the Kingdom, Ch. 12)

“Close attention should be given to the last prophecy of Moses (Deut. 28-32) because of the clear light it throws upon the subject of our present inquiry. It foretells the history of the children of Israel, down to the very end thereof, showing that it would be a history of continued apostasy and rebellion, and of stubborn refusal to hear the voice of Jehovah by His servants the prophets; and it declares with marvelous exactitude and fullness of detail what the end of that nation was to be (Deut. 28:49-68). This has ever been accounted, by all who have given attention to it, one of the greatest wonders of prophecy.

     And (Keith’s Prophecies) proceeds to show, as many other commentators have done, how, point by point, in the minutest detail, the judgments executed by the Romans in the years 66-70 of our era, were prescribed by Moses.

     Now the matter of chief interest for our present purposes is that, from this national destruction by the Romans there was to be no recovery. And in this, the prophecy of Moses is in full accord with that of Jesus Christ, recorded in Matthew 24 and Luke 21. For Moses said: “God will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land wither thou goest to possess it. And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth even to the other” (Deut. 28:63,64). This, according to this prophecy, was to be the end of their history as a nation.

     Nor is there any promise of God, by any later prophet, of recovery for the earthly nation from this final destruction and dispersion at the hands of the Romans. For an attentive reading of the prophecies concerning “Israel,” “Zion,” and “Jerusalem,” leads to the conclusions that such as are yet to be fulfilled relate to the heavenly people, country, and city, to which respectively those names properly belong; and that all prophecies of recovery intended for “Israel after the flesh” (I Cor. 10:18) were completely fulfilled in and after the return from the Babylonian captivity.”  (Hope of Israel, 6)

John Wesley (1754)
“But in the following he foretells their last destruction by the Romans. And the present deplorable state of the Jewish nation, so exactly answers this prediction, that it is an incontestable proof of the truth of the prophecy, and consequently of the divine authority of the scriptures. And this destruction more dreadful than the former shews, that their sin in rejecting Christ, was more provoking to God than idolatry itself, and left them more under the power of Satan. For their captivity in Babylon cured them effectually of idolatry in seventy years. But under this last destruction, they continue above sixteen hundred years incurably averse to the Lord Jesus.” (in loc.)

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Adam Clarke (1837)
“Verse 49. As the eagle flieth— The very animal on all the Roman standards. The Roman eagle is proverbial.
Whose tongue thou shalt not understand— The Latin language, than which none was more foreign to the structure and idiom of the Hebrew.” (in loc.)

John Gill (1809)
“Ver. 49. The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, &c.] Now though Babylon is represented as a country distant from Judea, and said to be a nation “from far”, #Jer 5:15; yet not “from the end of the earth”; as here; and though the Roman nation, strictly speaking, was not at so great a distance from Jerusalem, yet the Roman emperors, and great part of their armies brought against it, were fetched from our island of Great Britain, which in former times was reckoned the end of the earth, and the uttermost parts of the world {s}; and so Manasseh Ben Israel {t} interprets this nation of Rome, and observes, that Vespasian brought for his assistance many nations (or soldiers) out of England, France, Spain, and other parts of the world: and not only Vespasian was sent for from Britain to make war with the Jews, but when they rebelled, in the times of Adrian, Julius Severus, a very eminent general, was sent for from thence to quell them. And it appears to be a very ancient opinion of the Jews, that this passage is to be understood of the Romans, from what is related in one of their Talmuds {u}: they say, that

“Trajan, being sent for by his wife to subdue the Jews, determined to come in ten days, and came in five; he came and found them (the Jews) busy in the law on that verse, “the Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far”, &c. he said unto them, what are ye busy in? they answered him, so and so; he replied to them, this is the man (meaning himself) who thought to come in ten days, and came in five; and he surrounded them with his legions, and slew them:”

[as swift] as the eagle flieth; which may respect not so much the swiftness of this creature, the words which convey the idea being a supplement of the text, as the force with which it flies when in sight of its prey, and hastes unto it and falls upon it, which is irresistible; and this is the sense of the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions, and is what is ascribed to the eagle by other writers {w}. Now though this figure is used of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, #Jer 4:13 La 4:19 Hab 1:8; it agrees full as well or better with the Romans, because of their swiftness in coming from distant parts, and because of the force and impetus with which they invaded Judea, besieged Jerusalem, and attacked the Jews everywhere; and besides, the eagle was borne on the standard in the Roman army {x}:

a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; which, though it is also said of the language of the Chaldean nation, #Jer 5:15; yet as the Chaldee and Hebrew languages were only dialects of one and the same language, common to the eastern nations, the Chaldee language, though on account of termination of words, pronunciation, and other things, might be difficult, and hard to be understood by the Jews, yet must be much more easy to understand than the Roman language, so widely different from theirs.

{s} “—-In ultimos orbis Britannos”, Horat. Carmin. l. 1. Ode 35.
{t} De Termino Vitae, l. 3. sect. 3. p. 129.
{u} T. Hieros. Succah, fol. 55. 2.
{w} Vid. Homer. Iliad. 21. l. 252
{x} Vid. Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 10. c. 4.

Duncan McKenzie
“When the Roman armies came in AD 67 they systematically besieged the cities of Israel. Jerusalem was such a strong city that one of Rome’s main tactics was to surround the city to cut it off from essential resources such as food. The resulting famine was so bad that the desperate quest for food pitted family members against each other (Deut. 28:54-56). Josephus recorded the hostility that developed between family members because of the desperate straits of the Roman siege.

All human emotions yield to hunger, but of nothing is it so destructive as of shame; what at other times would claim respect is, in the time of famine, treated with contempt. Thus it was that wives snatched food from their husbands, children from father, and most pitiful of all- mothers out of the very mouths of their infants; while their dearest ones were dying in their arms, they did not hesitate to deprive them of the life-giving morsels. Josephus, The Jewish War 5,10,3

The famine in Jerusalem became so bad that Josephus recorded an incident where a mother secretly killed, cooked and ate her infant son (Josephus, The Jewish War, 6,3,4). The woman was discovered when her fellow starving Jews smelled cooking meat and went to investigate. This act (which fulfilled Duet. 28:57) shocked even the Romans. There were undoubtedly other acts of cannibalism that occurred in the siege that were not recorded.

Deuteronomy 28:50 says how the nation enforcing God’s covenant judgments would be “a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly or show favor to the young”. Josephus recorded how the Romans showed no favor to young or old, slaughtering all indiscriminately

They [the Roman army] poured into the alleys, [of Jerusalem] sword in hand, massacring indiscriminately all whom they met, and burned the houses with all who had taken refuge inside. Josephus, The Jewish War 6,8,5

God goes on in Deuteronomy 28 to say how when the covenant judgments came He would pluck the children of Israel off the land and scatter them from one end of the earth to the other. This was also fulfilled at AD 70 when the Romans scattered Israel among the nations.”

Ovid Need, Jr.
“Deut 28:15-68 was fulfilled at least twice: it was fulfilled when Assyria moved against the Jewish nation in fulfillment of Isaiah’s warning. (Note that even though God exalted Assyria as the rod of His anger, an instrument of chastising His people, when Assyria in its pagan pride exalted itself, God destroyed Assyria completely. God’s people are still here; Assyria is nothing but dust today. Furthermore, one of the symbols of Assyria was a winged lion. See Deut 28:49.) Moses’ prophecy was fulfilled again in 70 A.D. as Rome, under Titus, came against Jerusalem. Both Rome’s and Hitler’s ensign was an eagle. Deut 28:15-68 has been completely fulfilled (See our extensive study on Mat 21-24). The stammering lips and another tongue was God’s judicial sign of judgment upon the Jews because they hardened their hearts against the simple truths which Moses and the prophet Isaiah spoke. ” (Tongues, 4)

“The hunger during the siege was beyond anything known as women eat their own children, as foretold by Moses, Deuteronomy 28:49-68. (See Rev. 6:6.) Moses warned of the swiftly flying eagle, v. 49. The builders who lead the revolt knew Scripture. However, though the Roman eagle surrounded their city, their hardness in rebellion prevented their connection of what they were doing with what was now taking place around them. Note that fallen man very seldom, if ever, connects the judgments against his sins with his difficult circumstances. Only the grace of God opens eyes, so the connection can be made.  – Wars, Book VI, Chapter III, § 3, 4. App. E. “See the several predictions that the Jews, if they became obstinate in their idolatry and wickedness, should be sent again or sold into Egypt for their punishment, Deuteronomy 28:68; Jeremiah 44:7; Hosea 8:13; 9:3; 9:4, 5; 2 Samuel 15:10-13; with Authentic Records, Part I. p. 49, 121; and Reland Painest And, tom. II. p. 715.” Wars, Book VI, Chapter 9, § 2, note 31.” (Matthew 24: Facts and Fiction)

John MacArthur (1997)
(On Deuteronomy 28:68) “but no one will buy you. Israel would be so abandoned by God that she would not even be able to sell herself into slavery. The curse of God would bring Israel into a seemingly hopeless condition (cf. Hos. 8:13; 9:3). The specific mention of Egypt could be symbolic for any lands where the Jews have been taken into bondage or sold as slaves. But it is true that after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.70., which was a judgment on the apostasy of Israel and their rejection and execution of the Messiah,, this prophecy is actually fulfilled. The Roman general Titus, who conquered Jerusalem and Israel, sent 17,000 adults Jews to Egypt.”  (MacArthur Study Bible, p. 279)

Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge
“bring a nation. Though the Chaldeans are frequently described under the figure of an eagle, yet these verses especially predict the desolations brought on the Jews by the Romans; who came from a country far more distant than Chaldea; whose conquests were as rapid as the eagle’s flight, and whose standard bore this very figure; who spake a language to which the Jews were then entire strangers, being wholly unlike the Hebrew, of which the Chaldee was merely a dialect; whose appearance and victories were terrible; and whose yoke was a yoke of iron; and the havoc which they made tremendous.

# Nu 24:24 Isa 5:26-30 Jer 5:15-17 Da 6:22,23 9:26 Hab 1:6,7
# Lu 19:43,44
* as the eagle. # Jer 4:13 48:40 49:22 La 4:19 Eze 17:3,12 Ho 8:1 Mt 24:28
* a nation whose. # Jer 5:15 Eze 3:6 1Co 14:21

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Date: 03 Sep 2004

Time: 07:51:52

it seems that Latter day prophey comes complete in the New testement. Pauls letters to thess with the quotes of our Lord Jesus in Mathew and Luke , on the Abomination of desolation, this has not occured , the Abomination is when the Anti puts his image in the Temple that is not there. When the Jews see an Image ( graven) they will flee, What makes the temple desolate is when this anti goes in stating he is God. make note of rev 6 and the Pale horse which leads to death and Famine ( food) they will have to take his mark to eat. No where in history has this taken place. Daniel can now be read and we can see these things coming into effect, the Spirit of the anti is here, in governments, In Schools, sports, corruption as was in the days of Noah, everthing that God made was genetically pure, even Adam, and now scientist want to clone, and genetically replace everything that God said was good, Hybrids for every seed, except one, ” The Mustard seed” it cannot be divided. the time line between Adam and Abraham was 1948 years, Israel became a nation in 1948, and we have replacement theology, a falling away.stating that God has forsake Israel! ” Not so, Israel is home and one of the mightest nations on the face of the earth, Israel is alive. God Bless Jerusalam and God Bless America which is in moral decay. Larry Prier aka GunterCreek www.guntercreek.bravehost.com Duet 28 was the Lord on Israel. Jesus is Lord.

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Date: 16 Dec 2010
Time: 10:04:56

Seeing that the Most High’s word never turns void and his word comes to fulfillment then when were the jewish people taken back into Egypt in ships…knowing that Egypt is a figure of speach for bondage or places that has Egypt’s influences. “And the Lord will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you…And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slave…”

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Date: 16 Dec 2010
Time: 10:04:56

Seeing that the Most High’s word never turns void and his word comes to fulfillment then when were the jewish people taken back into Egypt in ships…knowing that Egypt is a figure of speach for bondage or places that has Egypt’s influences. “And the Lord will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you…And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slave…”

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Date: 20 Aug 2011
Time: 17:58:07

Today connections are being made from the flattening of Jerusalem in 70AD to the final diaspora involving the so-called African slave trade. If the original Israel suffered the full effects of Deut. 28, it is impossible that the present day Israel is anyway related to that. Israel was a people descending from the bloodline of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, not a physical political entity called Israel made up of the descendants of converts.