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32

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;

let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

2

May my teaching drop like the rain,

my speech condense like the dew;

like gentle rain on grass,

like showers on new growth.

3

For I will proclaim the name of the L ord;

ascribe greatness to our God!

 

4

The Rock, his work is perfect,

and all his ways are just.

A faithful God, without deceit,

just and upright is he;

5

yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him,

a perverse and crooked generation.

6

Do you thus repay the L ord,

O foolish and senseless people?

Is not he your father, who created you,

who made you and established you?

7

Remember the days of old,

consider the years long past;

ask your father, and he will inform you;

your elders, and they will tell you.

8

When the Most High apportioned the nations,

when he divided humankind,

he fixed the boundaries of the peoples

according to the number of the gods;

9

the L ord’s own portion was his people,

Jacob his allotted share.

 

10

He sustained him in a desert land,

in a howling wilderness waste;

he shielded him, cared for him,

guarded him as the apple of his eye.

11

As an eagle stirs up its nest,

and hovers over its young;

as it spreads its wings, takes them up,

and bears them aloft on its pinions,

12

the L ord alone guided him;

no foreign god was with him.

13

He set him atop the heights of the land,

and fed him with produce of the field;

he nursed him with honey from the crags,

with oil from flinty rock;

14

curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,

with fat of lambs and rams;

Bashan bulls and goats,

together with the choicest wheat—

you drank fine wine from the blood of grapes.

15

Jacob ate his fill;

Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked.

You grew fat, bloated, and gorged!

He abandoned God who made him,

and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.

16

They made him jealous with strange gods,

with abhorrent things they provoked him.

17

They sacrificed to demons, not God,

to deities they had never known,

to new ones recently arrived,

whom your ancestors had not feared.

18

You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you;

you forgot the God who gave you birth.

 

19

The L ord saw it, and was jealous;

he spurned his sons and daughters.

20

He said: I will hide my face from them,

I will see what their end will be;

for they are a perverse generation,

children in whom there is no faithfulness.

21

They made me jealous with what is no god,

provoked me with their idols.

So I will make them jealous with what is no people,

provoke them with a foolish nation.

22

For a fire is kindled by my anger,

and burns to the depths of Sheol;

it devours the earth and its increase,

and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

23

I will heap disasters upon them,

spend my arrows against them:

24

wasting hunger,

burning consumption,

bitter pestilence.

The teeth of beasts I will send against them,

with venom of things crawling in the dust.

25

In the street the sword shall bereave,

and in the chambers terror,

for young man and woman alike,

nursing child and old gray head.

26

I thought to scatter them

and blot out the memory of them from humankind;

27

but I feared provocation by the enemy,

for their adversaries might misunderstand

and say, “Our hand is triumphant;

it was not the L ord who did all this.”

 

28

They are a nation void of sense;

there is no understanding in them.

29

If they were wise, they would understand this;

they would discern what the end would be.

30

How could one have routed a thousand,

and two put a myriad to flight,

unless their Rock had sold them,

the L ord had given them up?

31

Indeed their rock is not like our Rock;

our enemies are fools.

32

Their vine comes from the vinestock of Sodom,

from the vineyards of Gomorrah;

their grapes are grapes of poison,

their clusters are bitter;

33

their wine is the poison of serpents,

the cruel venom of asps.

 

34

Is not this laid up in store with me,

sealed up in my treasuries?

35

Vengeance is mine, and recompense,

for the time when their foot shall slip;

because the day of their calamity is at hand,

their doom comes swiftly.

 

36

Indeed the L ord will vindicate his people,

have compassion on his servants,

when he sees that their power is gone,

neither bond nor free remaining.

37

Then he will say: Where are their gods,

the rock in which they took refuge,

38

who ate the fat of their sacrifices,

and drank the wine of their libations?

Let them rise up and help you,

let them be your protection!

 

39

See now that I, even I, am he;

there is no god besides me.

I kill and I make alive;

I wound and I heal;

and no one can deliver from my hand.

40

For I lift up my hand to heaven,

and swear: As I live forever,

41

when I whet my flashing sword,

and my hand takes hold on judgment;

I will take vengeance on my adversaries,

and will repay those who hate me.

42

I will make my arrows drunk with blood,

and my sword shall devour flesh—

with the blood of the slain and the captives,

from the long-haired enemy.

 

43

Praise, O heavens, his people,

worship him, all you gods!

For he will avenge the blood of his children,

and take vengeance on his adversaries;

he will repay those who hate him,

and cleanse the land for his people.

44 Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua son of Nun. 45When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, 46he said to them: “Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. 47This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.”

Moses’ Death Foretold

48 On that very day the L ord addressed Moses as follows: 49“Ascend this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, across from Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites for a possession; 50you shall die there on the mountain that you ascend and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin; 51because both of you broke faith with me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to maintain my holiness among the Israelites. 52Although you may view the land from a distance, you shall not enter it—the land that I am giving to the Israelites.”


5. They have corrupted themselves. Moses now inveighs unhesitatingly against the perfidy of the people, and gives loose to the most unmeasured upbraidings; for if God be just and true, then it was plain enough that the Israelites were a depraved and perverse nation. This perverse nation, he says, has corrupted itself towards Him, namely Him, whom he has just lauded for His perfect justice and faithfulness; and he accuses them of having basely prostituted to every sort of sin the chastity which they had promised to God. There is no doubt but that they were sorely wounded by these epithets, and would have been transported with rage, had they not seen that God’s incomparable servant, when he had now been called upon to die by God’s command, spoke as it were from heaven. The voice, therefore, of the dying man restrained their pride, so that they did not now dare to oppose him as a mortal; and afterwards, when the condemnation had been assented to by public authority, and by general accord, they were less at liberty to vent their madness against it. He introduces, by way of anticipation, the statement that they were not His children; for else they might obviously have made the objection that the sacred race of Abraham, which God had adopted, should be dealt with less reproachfully. Moses, therefore, declares that they are not children, because they are a perverse nation. For although their adoption always stood firm, still its efficacy was restricted to the elect part of them, so that God, without breaking His covenant, might reject the general body. But to explain the matter more clearly, it must be borne in mind that the Spirit, on different grounds, at one time assigns the name of God’s children to hypocrites, at another takes it away; for sometimes it is an aggravation of their criminality, when they are called the children of Abraham and Jacob as well as of God, an instance of which will soon occur. Here, however, in order that they may cease to glory without cause, they are said not to be children, because they are degenerate, and therefore disinherited by God, so as no longer to retain their honorable position. In this sense Moses declares that they are not children, as having cast off God from being their Father. It is added this was done with their spot (or disgrace; 253253     Added from the Fr. ) unless it be thought preferable to take it that. they were corrupted by their spots, or by their sins, to which I willingly assent; although I do not reject the other sense, namely, that their alienation from God had rendered them ignominious, or that they had contracted the stain of disgrace by their faithlessness.


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