THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY

 

Deuteronomy Chapter 32

1 ¶ Give ear, O you heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.

2 My doctrine will drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain on the tender plant, and as the showers on the grass:

3 Because I will proclaim the name of the LORD: ascribe greatness to our God.

4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are just: a God of truth without iniquity, just and right is he.

5 They have corrupted themselves, they are no longer his children because of their blemish: they are a perverse and crooked generation.

6 Is this your repayment to the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? is not he your father who has bought you? has he not made you, and established you?

7 ¶ Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask your father, that he may show you; your elders, that they may tell you.

8 When the most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

9 For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is his allotted inheritance.

10 He found him in a desert land, and in a howling wilderness waste; he encircled him, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

11 Like an eagle that stirs up her nest, and hovers over her young, the Lord spread out his wings, took them, and bore them on his wings:

12 So the LORD alone led Jacob, and there was no foreign god with him.

13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;

14 Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the finest of the wheat; and you drank the pure blood of the grape.

15 ¶ But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked: you have grown fat, you grew plump, you became gorged and sleek; then he forsook God who made him, and despised the Rock of his salvation.

16 They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, they provoked him to anger with abominations.

17 They sacrificed to devils, not to God; to gods whom they did not know, to new gods that recently came up, whom your fathers did not fear.

18 You were unmindful of the Rock that begat you, and have forgotten the God who formed you.

19 ¶ And when the LORD saw it, he rejected them, because of the provocation of his sons, and of his daughters.

20 And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end will be: for they are a very perverse generation, children who are without faith.

21 They have provoked me to jealousy with their false gods; they have provoked me to anger with their idols: so I will provoke them to jealousy with those who are not a nation; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

22 For a fire is kindled by mine anger, and it shall burn to the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with its increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

23 I will heap calamities upon them; I will shoot all my arrows at them.

24 They will be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with deadly pestilence: I will also send the teeth of beasts against them, with the poison of the crawling things of the dust.

25 The sword outdoors, and terror indoors, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling with the man of gray hairs.

26 ¶ I said, I would scatter them afar, I would have caused them to be forgotten by all men:

27 had I not suspected provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries misconstrue it, lest they should say, Our hand has prevailed, and none of it was the work of the LORD.

28 For they are a nation of unsound mind, nor is there any understanding in them.

29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!

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

31 For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.

32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and from the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:

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

34 Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?

35 Vengeance belongs to me, and recompense; their foot will slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes quickly.

36 For the LORD will judge his people, and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, and none remains, bond or free.

37 And he shall say, Where are their gods, the rock in whom they trusted,

38 Who ate the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.

39 ¶ See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god other than me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: nor is there any who can deliver out of my hand.

40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, and swear that, As I live for ever.

41 If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to my enemies, and will repay those who hate me.

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

43 Rejoice, O heavens, with him, and let all the angels of God worship him. Rejoice with his people, O you nations: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful to his land, and to his people.

44 ¶ And Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Joshua the son of Nun.

45 And when Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel:

46 He said to them, Take to heart all the words which I enjoin upon you this day, which you shall command your children to observe, to do all the words of this law.

47 For it is not a meaningless thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing you shall prolong your days in the land, which you cross over the Jordan to possess.

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

49 Go up onto this mountain of the Abarim, mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho; and look at the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel as a possession:

50 And die on the mount which you ascend, and be gathered to your people; as Aaron your brother died on mount Hor, and was gathered to his people:

51 Because you trespassed against me in the midst of the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Sin; because you did not revere me as holy in the midst of the children of Israel.

52 Yet you will see the land before you; but you shall not go there to the land that I give the children of Israel.