Deuteronomy 32:1-47

Hear, heavens, and I will speak. Listen, earth, to what I say. My teaching will drop like rain; my words will fall like dew. They will be like showers on the grass; they will pour down like rain on young plants. I will announce the name of the LORD. Praise God because he is great! He is like a rock; what he does is perfect, and he is always fair. He is a faithful God who does no wrong, who is right and fair. They have done evil against him. To their shame they are no longer his children; they are an evil and lying people. This is not the way to repay the LORD, you foolish and unwise people. He is your Father and Maker, who made you and formed you. Remember the old days. Think of the years already passed. Ask your father and he will tell you; ask your elders and they will inform you. God Most High gave the nations their lands, dividing up the human race. He set up borders for the people and even numbered the Israelites. The LORD took his people as his share, the people of Jacob as his very own. He found them in a desert, a windy, empty land. He surrounded them and brought them up, guarding them as those he loved very much. He was like an eagle building its nest that flutters over its young. It spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its feathers. The LORD alone led them, and there was no foreign god helping him. The LORD brought them to the heights of the land and fed them the fruit of the fields. He gave them honey from the rocks, bringing oil from the solid rock. There were milk curds from the cows and milk from the flock; there were fat sheep and goats. There were sheep and goats from Bashan and the best of the wheat. You drank the juice of grapes. Israel grew fat and kicked; they were fat and full and firm. They left the God who made them and rejected the Rock who saved them. They made God jealous with foreign gods and angry with hateful idols. They made sacrifices to demons, not God, to gods they had never known, new gods from nearby, gods your ancestors did not fear. You left God who is the Rock, your Father, and you forgot the God who gave you birth. The LORD saw this and rejected them; his sons and daughters had made him angry. He said, “I will turn away from them and see what will happen to them. They are evil people, unfaithful children. They used things that are not gods to make me jealous and worthless idols to make me angry. So I will use those who are not a nation to make them jealous; I will use a nation that does not understand to make them angry. My anger has started a fire that burns down to the place of the dead. It will burn up the ground and its crops, and it will set fire to the base of the mountains. “I will pile troubles upon them and shoot my arrows at them. They will be starved and sick, destroyed by terrible diseases. I will send them vicious animals and gliding, poisonous snakes. In the streets the sword will kill; in their homes there will be terror. Young men and women will die, and so will babies and gray-haired men. I will scatter them as I said, and no one will remember them. But I didn’t want their enemy to brag; their enemy might misunderstand and say, ‘We have won! The LORD has done none of this.’ ” Israel has no sense; they do not understand. I wish they were wise and understood this; I wish they could see what will happen to them. One person cannot chase a thousand people, and two people cannot fight ten thousand unless their Rock has sold them, unless the LORD has given them up. The rock of these people is not like our Rock; our enemies agree to that. Their vine comes from Sodom, and their fields are like Gomorrah. Their grapes are full of poison; their bunches of grapes are bitter. Their wine is like snake poison, like the deadly poison of cobras. “I have been saving this, and I have it locked in my storehouses. I will punish those who do wrong; I will repay them. Soon their foot will slip, because their day of trouble is near, and their punishment will come quickly.” The LORD will defend his people and have mercy on his servants. He will see that their strength is gone, that nobody is left, slaves or free. Then he will say, “Where are their gods? Where is the rock they trusted? Who ate the fat from their sacrifices, and who drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let those gods come to help you! Let them protect you! “Now you will see that I am the one God! There is no god but me. I send life and death; I can hurt, and I can heal. No one can escape from me. I raise my hand toward heaven and make this promise: As surely as I live forever, I will sharpen my flashing sword, and I will take it in my hand to judge. I will punish my enemies and pay back those who hate me. My arrows will be covered with their blood; my sword will eat their flesh. The blood will flow from those who are killed and the captives. The heads of the enemy leaders will be cut off.” Be happy, nations, with his people, because he will repay you for the blood of his servants. He will punish his enemies, and he will remove the sin of his land and people. Moses came with Joshua son of Nun, and they spoke all the words of this song for the people to hear. When Moses finished speaking these words to all Israel, he said to them: “Pay careful attention to all the words I have said to you today, and command your children to obey carefully everything in these teachings. These should not be unimportant words for you, but rather they mean life for you! By these words you will live a long time in the land you are crossing the Jordan River to take as your own.”