Deuteronomy 32:1-33 ▼

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

2 Let my teaching drop like rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as raindrops on the tender herb, and as showers on the grass.

3 For the name of YHWH I proclaim; ascribe greatness to our God.

4 The Rock—perfect His work is, for all His ways are just; a God of truth and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.

5 They have corrupted themselves; because of their blemish they are not His sons, a generation perverse and crooked.

6 Is it even to YHWH that you? would act this way, O people foolish and unwise? Is not He your Father who created you, He who made you and established you?

7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of generation upon generation. Ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.

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

9 For YHWH's portion is His people; Jacob is the place of His inheritance.

10 He found him in a desert land, and in the wasteland, a howling wilderness; He encircled him, He instructed him, He kept him as the pupil of His eye.

11 As an eagle stirs up his nest, he hovers over his young, he spreads his wings, he takes him, he carries him upon his pinions,

12 YHWH alone led him, and no foreign god was with him.

13 He made him ride on the heights of the earth, that he might eat the fruits of the field. And He made him draw honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty rock,

14 curds of the herd and milk of the flock, with fat of lambs, and rams of the sons of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and of the blood of the grape you drank wine.

15 And Jeshurun grew fat and kicked—you grew fat, you grew thick, you gorged—and he forsook God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation.

16 They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger.

17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known. New ones—from the vicinity they came—that your? fathers did not fear.

18 The Rock who brought you forth you neglected, and you forgot the God who gave you birth.

19 And YHWH saw it, and He spurned them, from the provocation of His sons and His daughters.

20 And He said, “I will hide My face from them, I shall see what is their end; for a perverse generation are they, sons in whom is no faithfulness.

21 They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God; they have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols. And I will provoke them to jealousy by those not a people; by a foolish nation I will anger them.

22 For a fire is kindled by My anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, and it shall consume the earth and its yield, and scorch the foundations of the mountains.

23 I will heap upon them disasters; My arrows I will spend on them:

24 Wasted by famine and devoured by pestilence and bitter destruction; and the teeth of beasts I will send against them, with the poison of fearful things of the dust.

25 Outside the sword will bereave, and inside shall be terror for the young man and virgin, the nursing child with the man of gray hairs.

26 I said I would dash them in pieces, I would remove their memory from among men,

27 if I had not feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, ‘Our hand is high, and it is not YHWH who has done all this.’”

28 For they are a nation void of counsel, and in them there is no understanding.

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

30 How does one pursue a thousand, and two put to flight a myriad, if not that their Rock had sold them and YHWH had surrendered them?

31 For their rock is not like our Rock, and our enemies themselves are judges.

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

33 The poison of serpents is their wine, and the cruel venom of cobras.