Deuteronomy 32

¹Give ear, O heavens, and let me speak; and let the earth hear the sayings of my mouth.

²May my teaching drip like the rain, may my speech flow down like the dew, like showers upon the young grass, and like gentle rains upon the vegetation.

³For the name of the Lord I will proclaim; ascribe greatness to our God!

⁴The Rock -- his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is he.

⁵They have acted corruptly toward him -- they are not his children; their blemish is a generation twisted and perverse.

⁶Is this what you repay the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is he not your father who acquired you? He made you and established you.

⁷Remember the days of old; consider the years of generation after generation. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will speak to you.

⁹For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the allotted share of his inheritance.

¹⁰He found him in a wilderness land, in a formless, howling wasteland; he surrounded him, he gave him understanding, he guarded him like the pupil of his eye.

¹¹as an eagle that stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreads its wings, takes them, and lifts them on its pinions --

¹²The Lord alone guided him, and there was no foreign god with him.

¹³He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field; and he made him suck honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty rock.

¹⁴Curds of cattle and milk of the flock, with the fat of lambs and rams, sons of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of wheat; and the blood of the grape you drank -- wine.

¹⁵And Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, you thickened, you grew sleek. Then he abandoned God who made him, and dishonored the Rock of his salvation.

¹⁶They made him jealous with strange things; with abominations they provoked him.

¹⁷They sacrificed to the demons -- no god -- to gods they had not known, new ones who came from nearby, whom your fathers of you all had not dreaded.

¹⁸The Rock who begot you, you neglected, and you forgot God who formed you through birth pangs.

¹⁹The Lord saw and spurned them because of the provocation of his sons and daughters.

²⁰And he said, I will hide my face from them; I will see what their end will be. For they are a generation of perversities, sons in whom there is no faithfulness.

²¹They have made me jealous with what is no god; they have provoked me to anger with their empty things. And I will make them jealous with what is no people; with a foolish nation I will provoke them to anger.

²²For a fire has been kindled by my anger, and it burns to the lowest Sheol; it consumes the earth and its produce, and sets ablaze the foundations of the mountains.

²³I will heap calamities upon them; I will spend my arrows against them.

²⁴Wasted by famine, and devoured by fiery bolts, and bitter pestilence; and the tooth of beasts I will send against them, along with the venom of crawlers in the dust.

²⁵From outside the sword bereaves, and from the chambers is terror -- both the young man and the young woman, the nursing child together with the gray-haired man.

²⁶I said I would scatter them; I would make their memory cease from among humanity.

²⁷Were it not that I feared the vexation of the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, 'Our hand is raised high, and the LORD has not done all this.'

²⁸For they are a nation that has lost counsel, and there is no understanding in them.

²⁹If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.

³⁰How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had given them up?

³¹For their rock is not like our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges of this.

³²For their vine is from the vine of Sodom, and from the terraced fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters are bitter.

³³Their wine is the venom of serpents, the cruel poison of cobras.

³⁴Is it not stored up with me, sealed in my treasuries?

³⁵Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot slips; for near is the day of their calamity, and what is prepared for them hastens.

³⁶For the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, for he sees that their power is gone, and there is none remaining, shut in or set free.

³⁷And he will say: Where are their gods, the rock in whom they took refuge?

³⁸Who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their libations? Let them rise up and help you; let there be shelter over you!

³⁹See now that I, I am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none who can deliver from my hand.

⁴⁰For I lift up my hand to the heavens and say: As I live forever,

⁴¹When I have sharpened my flashing sword, and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will return vengeance on my adversaries, and I will requite those who hate me.

⁴²I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh -- with the blood of the slain and the captive, from the long-haired heads of the enemy.

⁴³Shout for joy, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will return vengeance on his adversaries, and will atone for his land, for his people.

⁴⁴And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he and Hoshea son of Nun.

⁴⁵And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel,

⁴⁶He said to them, 'Set your heart to all the words that I am testifying to you today, which you shall command your children to be careful to do -- all the words of this Torah.'

⁴⁷For it is not an empty word for you, for it is your life; and by this word you will lengthen your days on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

⁴⁸And the LORD spoke to Moses on that very day, saying,

⁴⁹Go up to this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, which is opposite Jericho, and see the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel as a possession.

⁵⁰And die on the mountain that you ascend, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people.

⁵¹Because you were unfaithful to me in the midst of the sons of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the Wilderness of Zin; because you did not hallow me in the midst of the sons of Israel.

⁵²For from a distance you shall see the land, but you shall not enter the land that I am giving to the children of Israel.