Give ear, ye heavens, and I will speak;
And let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
My doctrine shall drop as the rain;
My speech shall distil as the dew,
As the small rain upon the tender grass,
And as the showers upon the herb.
For I will proclaim the name of Jehovah:
Ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
The Rock, his work is perfect;
For all his ways are justice:
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
Just and right is he.
They have dealt corruptly with him, they are not his children, it is their blemish;
They are a perverse and crooked generation.
Do ye thus requite Jehovah,
O foolish people and unwise?
Is not he thy father that hath bought thee?
He hath made thee, and established thee.
Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations:
Ask thy father, and he will show thee;
Thine elders, and they will tell thee.
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
When he separated the children of men,
He set the bounds of the peoples
According to the number of the children of Israel.
For Jehovah’s portion is his people;
Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
He found him in a desert land,
And in the waste howling wilderness;
He compassed him about, he cared for him,
He kept him as the apple of his eye.
As an eagle that stirreth up her nest,
That fluttereth over her young,
He spread abroad his wings, he took them,
He bare them on his pinions.
Jehovah alone did lead him,
And there was no foreign god with him.
He made him ride on the high places of the earth,
And he did eat the increase of the field;
And he made him to suck honey out of the rock,
And oil out of the flinty rock;
Butter of the herd, and milk of the flock,
With fat of lambs,
And rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats,
With the finest of the wheat;
And of the blood of the grape thou drankest wine.
But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked:
Thou art waxed fat, thou art grown thick, thou art become sleek;
Then he forsook God who made him,
And lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
They moved him to jealousy with strange gods;
With abominations provoked they him to anger.
They sacrificed unto demons, which were no God,
To gods that they knew not,
To new gods that came up of late,
Which your fathers dreaded not.
Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful,
And hast forgotten God that gave thee birth.
And Jehovah saw it, and abhorred them,
Because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.
And he said, I will hide my face from them,
I will see what their end shall be:
For they are a very perverse generation,
Children in whom is no faithfulness.
They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God;
They have provoked me to anger with their vanities:
And I will move them to jealousy with those that are not a people;
I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
For a fire is kindled in mine anger,
And burneth unto the lowest Sheol,
And devoureth the earth with its increase,
And setteth on fire the foundations of the mountains.
I will heap evils upon them;
I will spend mine arrows upon them:
They shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat
And bitter destruction;
And the teeth of beasts will I send upon them,
With the poison of crawling things of the dust.
Without shall the sword bereave,
And in the chambers terror;
It shall destroy both young man and virgin,
The suckling with the man of gray hairs.
I said, I would scatter them afar,
I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men;
Were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy,
Lest their adversaries should judge amiss,
Lest they should say, Our hand is exalted,
And Jehovah hath not done all this.