Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy 32
The Song of Moses
1 Listen, heaven, and I will speak;
1 and let the earth hear the words out of my mouth.
2 Let my speech be waited for like the rain,
2 and my words come down like the dew,
2 like a shower on the young grass,
2 and like snow on the meadow.
3 For I have called on the name of the Lord:
3 give greatness to our God.
4 As for God, his works are true,
4 and all his ways are judgment.
4 God is faithful and there is no wrong in him;
4 the Lord is just and holy.
5 They have sinned; they are no pleasure to him —
5 stained children, a twisted and crooked generation.
6 Is this how you pay the Lord back?
6 Are the people so foolish and so unwise?
6 Was it not he, your father, who bought you,
6 and made you, and shaped you?
7 Remember the days of long ago;
7 think about the years of ages past.
7 Ask your father and he will tell you,
7 your elders, and they will explain it to you.
8 When the Most High divided out the nations,
8 when he scattered the sons of Adam,
8 he set the boundaries of the nations
8 by the number of the messengers of God.
9 And his people Jacob became the Lord's portion;
9 Israel was the measured line of his inheritance.
10 He kept him alive in the wilderness,
10 in burning thirst and a dry land.
10 He led him about and taught him,
10 and guarded him like the pupil of an eye.
11 As an eagle watches over its nest
11 and hovers over its young,
11 and spreads its wings and gathers them
11 and carries them up on its back —
12 the Lord alone led them;
12 there was no foreign god with them.
13 He brought them up on the height of the land;
13 he fed them on the fruits of the fields.
13 They sucked honey out of the rock
13 and oil out of the hard stone —
14 butter of cows and milk of sheep,
14 with the fat of lambs and rams,
14 of calves and of kids,
14 with the richest of the wheat;
14 and he drank wine, the blood of the grape.
15 So Jacob ate and was full,
15 and the beloved one kicked.
15 He grew fat, he grew thick and broad;
15 then he abandoned the God who made him
15 and turned away from God his Savior.
16 They provoked me with foreign gods;
16 with their detestable things they made me bitterly angry.
17 They sacrificed to demons and not to God,
17 to gods they had not known —
17 new gods, freshly arrived,
17 whom their fathers had not known.
18 You abandoned the God who fathered you,
18 and forgot the God who feeds you.
What God Says
19 And the Lord saw it and was jealous,
19 and was provoked by the anger of his sons and daughters,
20 and said:
20 I will turn my face away from them
20 and show what will happen to them in the last days;
20 for it is a crooked generation,
20 children with no faith in them.
21 They made me jealous with what is not God;
21 they exasperated me with their idols.
21 And I will make them jealous with those who are not a nation;
21 I will anger them with a nation with no understanding.
22 For a fire has been lit out of my anger;
22 it will burn down to Hades below.
22 It will eat up the land and its fruits;
22 it will set fire to the foundations of the mountains.
23 I will gather evils on them
23 and fight against them with my weapons.
24 They will be worn away with hunger and eaten by birds,
24 and there will be convulsions with no cure.
24 I will send the teeth of wild animals against them,
24 with the fury of snakes that crawl on the ground.
25 Outside, the sword will take their children,
25 and terror will come out of the inner rooms;
25 the young man will die with the young woman,
25 the nursing child with the old man.
26 I said: I will scatter them,
26 and I will make their memory stop among men —
27 except for the anger of the enemy,
27 in case they should last a long time,
27 in case their enemies should band together,
27 in case they should say: Our own high hand,
27 and not the Lord, has done all this.
28 It is a nation that has lost its counsel,
28 and there is no understanding in them.
29 They had not the sense to understand;
29 let them keep these things for the time to come.
30 How would one man chase a thousand,
30 and two put ten thousand to flight,
30 if God had not sold them,
30 and the Lord handed them over?
31 For their gods are not like our God —
31 but our enemies have no understanding.
32 For their vine is from the vine of Sodom,
32 and their vine branch from Gomorrah.
32 Their grape is a grape of poison;
32 their cluster is a cluster of bitterness.
33 Their wine is the fury of snakes,
33 and the incurable fury of asps.
34 Look — are these things not stored up with me,
34 and sealed among my treasures?
35 On the day of payback I will repay,
35 whenever their foot slips;
35 for the day of their ruin is near them,
35 and what is ready for you is close at hand.
36 For the Lord will judge his people
36 and will be comforted over his servants;
36 for he saw that they were utterly worn out,
36 and had failed under the invasion, and had gone weak.
37 And the Lord said:
37 Where are their gods that they trusted in —
38 whose sacrifices you ate the fat of,
38 and whose drink offerings you drank the wine of?
38 Let them get up and help you;
38 let them be your shelter.
39 See now, see that I am he,
39 and there is no god beside me.
39 I kill and I will make alive;
39 I strike and I will heal;
39 and there is nobody who can rescue out of my hands.
40 For I will lift up my hand to heaven
40 and swear by my right hand,
40 and I will say: I live forever.
41 For I will sharpen my sword like lightning,
41 and my hand will take hold of judgment;
41 and I will give judgment to my enemies,
41 and pay back those who hate me.
42 I will make my weapons drunk with blood,
42 and my sword will eat flesh —
42 with the blood of the wounded
42 and of the captives, from the heads of the enemy commanders.
43 Be glad, you heavens, together with him,
43 and let all the sons of God bow down to him.
43 Be glad, you nations, with his people,
43 and let all the messengers of God take strength in him.
43 For he avenges the blood of his sons,
43 and he will take vengeance and pay back justice to his enemies,
43 and he will repay those who hate him;
43 and the Lord will cleanse the land of his people.
Go Up the Mountain and Die
44 And Moses wrote this song that day and taught it to the children of Israel; and Moses went in and spoke all the words of this law in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua son of Nun. 45 And Moses finished speaking to all Israel. 46 And he said to them, 46 “Set your heart on all these words, which I am witnessing to you today, which you are to command your sons to keep and to do — all the words of this law. 47 For this is no empty word to you; it is your life, and because of this word you will live long on the land you are crossing the Jordan to take.”
48 And the Lord spoke to Moses that same day. He said, 49 Go up Mount Abarim, this mountain Nebo, which is in the land of Moab facing Jericho, and look at the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the sons of Israel to hold; 50 and die on the mountain you are going up, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. 51 Because you disobeyed my word among the children of Israel at the waters of quarrelling at Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, because you did not treat me as holy among the sons of Israel. 52 You will see the land in front of you, but you are not going into it.