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32. The Song of Moses

¹ Listen, you heavens, and I will speak;
   hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.
² Let my teaching fall like rain
   and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
   like abundant rain on tender plants.

    ³ I will proclaim the name of the LORD.
   Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
⁴ He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
   and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
   upright and just is he.

    ⁵ They are corrupt and not his children;
   to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation.
⁶ Is this the way you repay the LORD,
   you foolish and unwise people?
Is he not your Father, your Creator, Or Father, who bought you
   who made you and formed you?

    ⁷ Remember the days of old;
   consider the generations long past.
Ask your father and he will tell you,
   your elders, and they will explain to you.
⁸ When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
   when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples
   according to the number of the sons of Israel. Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scrolls (see also Septuagint) sons of God
⁹ For the LORD’s portion is his people,
   Jacob his allotted inheritance.

    ¹⁰ In a desert land he found him,
   in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
   he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
¹¹ like an eagle that stirs up its nest
   and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
   and carries them aloft.
¹² The LORD alone led him;
   no foreign god was with him.

    ¹³ He made him ride on the heights of the land
   and fed him with the fruit of the fields.
He nourished him with honey from the rock,
   and with oil from the flinty crag,
¹⁴ with curds and milk from herd and flock
   and with fattened lambs and goats,
with choice rams of Bashan
   and the finest kernels of wheat.
You drank the foaming blood of the grape.

    ¹⁵ Jeshurun Jeshurun means the upright one, that is, Israel. grew fat and kicked;
   filled with food, they became heavy and sleek.
They abandoned the God who made them
   and rejected the Rock their Savior.
¹⁶ They made him jealous with their foreign gods
   and angered him with their detestable idols.
¹⁷ They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God—
   gods they had not known,
   gods that recently appeared,
   gods your ancestors did not fear.
¹⁸ You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;
   you forgot the God who gave you birth.

    ¹⁹ The LORD saw this and rejected them
   because he was angered by his sons and daughters.
²⁰ “I will hide my face from them,” he said,
   “and see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
   children who are unfaithful.
²¹ They made me jealous by what is no god
   and angered me with their worthless idols.
I will make them envious by those who are not a people;
   I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.
²² For a fire will be kindled by my wrath,
   one that burns down to the realm of the dead below.
It will devour the earth and its harvests
   and set afire the foundations of the mountains.

    ²³ “I will heap calamities on them
   and spend my arrows against them.
²⁴ I will send wasting famine against them,
   consuming pestilence and deadly plague;
I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts,
   the venom of vipers that glide in the dust.
²⁵ In the street the sword will make them childless;
   in their homes terror will reign.
The young men and young women will perish,
   the infants and those with gray hair.
²⁶ I said I would scatter them
   and erase their name from human memory,
²⁷ but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy,
   lest the adversary misunderstand
and say, ‘Our hand has triumphed;
   the LORD has not done all this.’”

    ²⁸ They are a nation without sense,
   there is no discernment in them.
²⁹ If only they were wise and would understand this
   and discern what their end will be!
³⁰ How could one man chase a thousand,
   or two put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
   unless the LORD had given them up?
³¹ For their rock is not like our Rock,
   as even our enemies concede.
³² Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom
   and from the fields of Gomorrah.
Their grapes are filled with poison,
   and their clusters with bitterness.
³³ Their wine is the venom of serpents,
   the deadly poison of cobras.

    ³⁴ “Have I not kept this in reserve
   and sealed it in my vaults?
³⁵ It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
   In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
   and their doom rushes upon them.”

    ³⁶ The LORD will vindicate his people
   and relent concerning his servants
when he sees their strength is gone
   and no one is left, slave or free. Or and they are without a ruler or leader
³⁷ He will say: “Now where are their gods,
   the rock they took refuge in,
³⁸ the gods who ate the fat of their sacrifices
   and drank the wine of their drink offerings?
Let them rise up to help you!
   Let them give you shelter!

    ³⁹ “See now that I myself am he!
   There is no god besides me.
I put to death and I bring to life,
   I have wounded and I will heal,
   and no one can deliver out of my hand.
⁴⁰ I lift my hand to heaven and solemnly swear:
   As surely as I live forever,
⁴¹ when I sharpen my flashing sword
   and my hand grasps it in judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries
   and repay those who hate me.
⁴² I will make my arrows drunk with blood,
   while my sword devours flesh:
the blood of the slain and the captives,
   the heads of the enemy leaders.”

    ⁴³ Rejoice, you nations, with his people, Or Make his people rejoice, you nations Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scrolls (see also Septuagint) people, / and let all the angels worship him, /
   for he will avenge the blood of his servants;
he will take vengeance on his enemies
   and make atonement for his land and people.

⁴⁴ Moses came with Joshua Hebrew Hoshea, a variant of Joshua son of Nun and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people. ⁴⁵ When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, ⁴⁶ he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. ⁴⁷ They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

Moses to Die on Mount Nebo

⁴⁸ On that same day the LORD told Moses, ⁴⁹ “Go up into the Abarim Range to Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho, and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites as their own possession. ⁵⁰ There on the mountain that you have climbed you will die and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. ⁵¹ This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites. ⁵² Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.”

16 They provoked him to jealousy. It is only figuratively that jealousy is attributed to God, who is free from all passions; but, since men never sufficiently reflect how great pollution they contract by their idolatries, it is necessary that the grossness of the sin should be expressed in such terms as this, implying that men do no less injury to God, when they transfer to others the honor due to Him, and that the offense is no lighter than as if a licentious woman should provoke her husband’s mind to jealousy, and inflict a wound upon him by running after adulterers. This jealousy has reference to the sacred and spiritual marriage, whereby God had bound His people to Himself. The suae is, that the Israelites were as insulting to God by their superstitions as if they had designedly provoked Him.

In the next verse an amplification follows, viz., that they had transferred to devils the worship due to God alone. By the general consent of all nations God ought to be worshipped by sacrifices; for, although the Gentiles invented for themselves divers gods, still the persuasion continued to prevail, that this service was the peculiar prerogative of Deity. Nothing, then, could be more disgraceful or detestable than to rob God of His honor, and to offer it to demons. This, indeed, would never have been admitted by the Israelites, inasmuch as they pretended that their minor gods were their advocates with the supreme and only Creator of the world, and did not hesitate to account as rendered to Him whatever they shared among their idols. Here, however, He first of all repudiates all such mixtures whereby His holy name is unworthily profaned, and suffers Himself not to be associated with idols; and, secondly, by whatever titles they may dignify their idols, He declares all false gods to be demons. Hence it follows that the sacrifices made to them are infected with sacrilege. Both of these points are worthy of careful remark, viz., that God abominates all corruptions of His service; and also, that whatever names the world may invent for its gods, they are so many masks, under which the devil hides himself for the deception of the simple.

Furthermore, Moses reproves the folly of the Israelites in having promiscuously devoted themselves to unknown gods; just as an adulterous woman might prostitute herself indiscriminately to all comers. When he says that they came from near, ²⁶⁶²⁶⁶ A. V., “newly.” Lat., e propinquo.” it has reference to time, and is equivalent to saying that they had lately sprung up. Thirdly, it is said, that these gods were not honored by their fathers; for thus their perverse love of novelty is proved against them, inasmuch as they had not been even led by imitation of their fathers, but in their restless innovation had procured for themselves new and unwonted gods. Not that the law of piety is founded on antiquity alone, as if it were sufficient to follow the customs handed down by our ancestors; for thus any of the religions of the Gentiles might be proved true, but because the genuine and faithful tradition of their fathers would be the sure and approved rule for the worship of God. For Moses assumes a higher principle, viz., that their fathers were truly and most unmistakably instructed who was the one and only God, in whom alone they ought to trust. Yet a distinction is here to be drawn between these holy fathers and the reprobate; for the imitation of their fathers, which here seems to be deemed praiseworthy, is elsewhere severely condemned, because the Jews were carried away, without discrimination, after the bad examples of their fathers. Moses, therefore, here refers to no other fathers than those who were in a position to hand down what they had learned from God Himself. The word fear often comprises, by synecdoche, the whole service of God, and sometimes is applied to outward ceremonies: the word שער, sagnar however, is here used, which means properly to stand in awe of, or to dread; ²⁶⁷²⁶⁷ In the editions of Geneva, 1563 and 1573, C. is made to say, that this word is equivalent to “formare, vel pavere;” the former being probably a misprint for reformidare. — W. The Fr. renders the words “Redouter, ou avoir peur.” but still in the same sense.