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Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;

let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

May my teaching drop like the rain,

my speech condense like the dew;

like gentle rain on grass,

like showers on new growth.

For I will proclaim the name of the L ord;

ascribe greatness to our God!

The Rock, his work is perfect,

and all his ways are just.

A faithful God, without deceit,

just and upright is he;

yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him,

a perverse and crooked generation.

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?

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.

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;

the L ord’s own portion was his people,

Jacob his allotted share.

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.

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,

the L ord alone guided him;

no foreign god was with him.

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;

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.

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.

They made him jealous with strange gods,

with abhorrent things they provoked him.

They sacrificed to demons, not God,

to deities they had never known,

to new ones recently arrived,

whom your ancestors had not feared.

You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you;

you forgot the God who gave you birth.

The L ord saw it, and was jealous;

he spurned his sons and daughters.

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.

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.

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.

I will heap disasters upon them,

spend my arrows against them:

wasting hunger,

burning consumption,

bitter pestilence.

The teeth of beasts I will send against them,

with venom of things crawling in the dust.

In the street the sword shall bereave,

and in the chambers terror,

for young man and woman alike,

nursing child and old gray head.

I thought to scatter them

and blot out the memory of them from humankind;

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.”

They are a nation void of sense;

there is no understanding in them.

If they were wise, they would understand this;

they would discern what the end would be.

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?

Indeed their rock is not like our Rock;

our enemies are fools.

Their vine comes from the vinestock of Sodom,

from the vineyards of Gomorrah;

their grapes are grapes of poison,

their clusters are bitter;

their wine is the poison of serpents,

the cruel venom of asps.

Is not this laid up in store with me,

sealed up in my treasuries?

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.

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.

Then he will say: Where are their gods,

the rock in which they took refuge,

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!

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.

For I lift up my hand to heaven,

and swear: As I live forever,

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.

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.

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.”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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.

²⁶⁶ A. V., “newly.” Lat., e propinquo.”

²⁶⁷ 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.”