Deuteronomy 32:1-25 ▼

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

2 Let what I have learned drop as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, As the droplets on the fresh grass And as the showers on the herb.

3 For I proclaim the name of Yahweh; Ascribe greatness to our God!

4 The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.

5 They have acted corruptly toward Him, They are not His children because of their defect; But are a perverse and crooked generation.

6 Do you thus repay Yahweh, O people who are wickedly foolish and without wisdom? Is not He your Father who has bought you? He has made you and established you.

7 Remember the ancient days, Consider the years from generation to generation. Ask your father, and he will declare to you, Your elders, and they will speak to you.

8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel.

9 For Yahweh’s portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance.

10 He found him in a desert land, And in the howling waste of a wilderness; He encircled him; He cared for him; He guarded him as the pupil of His eye.

11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, That hovers over its young, He spread His wings and caught them; He carried them on His pinions.

12 Yahweh alone guided him, And there was no foreign god with him.

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

14 Curds of cows, and milk of the flock, With fat of lambs, And rams, the breed of Bashan, and goats, With the finest of the wheat— And of the blood of grapes you drank wine.

15 “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked— You grew fat, thick, and sleek— Then he abandoned God who made him, And treated the Rock of his salvation with wicked foolishness.

16 They made Him jealous with strange gods; With abominations they provoked Him to anger.

17 They sacrificed to demons who were not God, To gods whom they have not known, New gods who came lately, Whom your fathers did not dread.

18 You neglected the Rock who begot you, And forgot the God who brought you forth.

19 “And Yahweh saw this and spurned them Because of the provocation of His sons and daughters.

20 Then He said, ‘I will hide My face from them; I will see what their end shall be; For they are a perverse generation, Sons in whom is no faithfulness.

21 They have made Me jealous with what is not God; They have provoked Me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a wickedly foolish nation,

22 For a fire is kindled in My anger, And it burns to the lowest part of Sheol, And it consumes the earth with its produce, And it sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

23 ‘I will heap calamities on them; I will exhaust My arrows on them.

24 They will be wasted by famine, and consumed by plague And bitter destruction; And the teeth of beasts I will send upon them, With the venom of crawling things of the dust.

25 Outside the sword will bereave, And inside terror— Both choice man and virgin, The nursing baby with the man of gray hair.