Deuteronomy 32

1Give ear, O heavens, and I will proclaim; let the earth hear attentively the appointed words of my mouth.

2May my teaching drop like rain, my words distil like dew—like small rains upon tender grass, and showers upon herbage.

3For I will proclaim Yahweh's name. Ascribe greatness to our God.

4The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are just: a God of faithfulness without iniquity, righteous and upright is he.

5They have become corrupt with him; they are not his children but a blemished generation, perverse and twisted.

6Do you repay Yahweh this way, you foolish and unwise people? Is he not your father, who acquired you? He made you and established you.

7Remember ancient days, consider the years generation after generation; ask your father, and he will declare it to you, your elders, and they will tell you.

8When the Most High allotted inheritances to the nations, when he divided the sons of men, he established boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.

9For Yahweh's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

10He found him in a desert land, in an empty howling desolation. He encircled him, watched over him closely, and guarded him as the pupil of his eye.

11Like an eagle that rouses its nest over its young and flutters above them, spreading its wings, it takes them and bears them on its pinions.

12Yahweh alone led him, with no foreign god beside him.

13He made him ride on the high places of the earth, and he ate the yield of the fields, and he made him suck honey from the rock and oil from the flinty rock.

14Butter from cattle and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs and rams of Bashan’s breed and goats, with fat of wheat’s kidneys—and you drank wine, the blood of the grapes.

15Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, you grew thick, you grew sleek. He forsook the God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation.

16They made him jealous with other gods; they angered him with abominations.

17They sacrificed to demons, not God—gods they did not know, new gods that came recently, whom your fathers did not fear.

18You are unmindful of the Rock who fathered you, and have forgotten the God who brought you forth.

19Yahweh saw and spurned because of the provocation of his sons and daughters.

20He said, "I will conceal my face from them; I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, sons without faithfulness in them."

21They have roused my jealousy with no god and my anger with their vanities; I will rouse their jealousy with no people and their anger with a foolish nation.

22For a fire blazes in my anger and scorches to the depths of Sheol, devouring the earth with its yield and enflaming the foundations of the mountains.

23I will pile calamities on them; I will use up my arrows against them.

24They will be consumed by famine, devoured by burning heat and bitter destruction; I will send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the venom of dust-crawling things.

25Outside the sword will bereave, and terror from the inner chambers; young man and virgin alike, the suckling with the gray-haired man.

26I said I would scatter them afar and make their memory cease from mankind.

27Except that I feared the enemy's anger, lest their adversaries misconstrue it, lest they say, "Our hand is exalted, and Yahweh has not done all this."

28For they are a nation bereft of counsel, with no understanding in them.

29If only they were wise, that they might consider this, that they might understand their end!

30How can one chase a thousand and two make ten thousand flee, if not because their Rock sold them and Yahweh handed them over?

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

32For their vine comes from Sodom's vine and Gomorrah's blasted fields; their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters bitter.

33Their wine is the venom of serpents, the fierce poison of adders.

34Isn't this stored up with me, sealed in my treasuries?

35Vengeance is mine, and recompense, when their foot slips; for the day of their calamity is near, and the things prepared for them hasten.

36For Yahweh will judge his people and have compassion on his servants when he sees their power failing, with none restrained or forsaken.

37He will say, “Where are their gods, the rock they trusted in?”

38Who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you, and be a covering over you.

39See now that I myself am he, and no god stands with me. I put to death and make alive; I wound and I heal; none delivers from my hand.

40For I raise my hand to heaven and say, "I live forever."

41If I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps justice, I will repay vengeance to my adversaries and repay those who hate me.

42I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will devour flesh with the blood of the slain and captives, from the head of revenges upon the enemy.

43Rejoice, nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, repay vengeance to his adversaries, and atone for his land, his people.

44Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua son of Nun.

45Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel.

46He said to them, “Take all these words I charge you with today to heart, which you shall command your children to keep and carry out, every word of this law.”

47For it is no empty word for you, because it is your life, and through this word you shall prolong your days in the land where you are crossing over the Jordan to possess it there.

48Yahweh spoke to Moses on that very day, saying,

49Ascend this mountain of Abarim, Mount Nebo, which lies in the land of Moab across from Jericho, and see the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel for a possession.

50Die on the mountain where you ascend there, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people.

51Because you acted faithlessly against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin; because you did not treat me as holy among the children of Israel.

52For you will see the land before you, but you will not enter it, the land I am giving to the sons of Israel.