Deuteronomy 32

1“Listen, heavens, and I will speak; earth, hear the words I say. 2May my teaching fall like rain, my words settle like the dew, like soft rain on young grass, like showers on growing plants. 3For I will proclaim the name of the LORD; give our God the praise for his greatness! 4The Rock: his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, righteous and upright is he. 5They have acted corruptly toward him; by their own fault they are not his children, a twisted and crooked generation. 6Is this how you repay the LORD, you foolish and senseless people? Is he not your father, who brought you into being, who made you and set you firmly in place? 7Remember the days of long ago; think about the years of past generations. Ask your father, and he will tell you; ask your elders, and they will explain it to you. 8When the Most High gave each nation its inheritance, when he divided up humanity, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the Israelites. 9But the LORD’s own portion is his people; Jacob is the share he measured out as his inheritance. 10He found him in a desert land, in an empty waste where the wind howls. He shielded him on every side and watched over him; he guarded him as the pupil of his eye. 11Like an eagle that rouses its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its feathers, 12The LORD alone led him; no foreign god was at his side. 13He set him riding over the heights of the land, and he ate the crops of the fields. He fed him honey from the crags and oil from the hard rock, 14curds from the cattle and milk from the flock, with the fat of lambs, and rams of Bashan, and goats, with the finest of the wheat; and you drank wine, the foaming blood of grapes. 15But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked out; you grew fat, heavy and sleek. He abandoned the God who made him and treated the Rock of his salvation with contempt. 16They made him jealous with foreign gods; with detestable things they made him angry. 17They sacrificed to demons that were not God, to gods they had never known, new gods who had recently arrived, whom your ancestors never feared. 18You neglected the Rock who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth. 19The LORD saw it and rejected them, because his sons and his daughters provoked him. 20He said, ‘I will hide my face from them and see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children who cannot be trusted. 21They made me jealous with what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols; so I will make them jealous with those who are no people and anger them with a foolish nation. 22For a fire is kindled by my anger; it burns down to the depths of Sheol. It consumes the earth and its crops and sets the roots of the mountains on fire. 23I will pile disasters on them and spend my arrows against them. 24They will waste away from hunger, devoured by plague and deadly disease. Against them I will send the teeth of wild animals, and the venom of snakes that glide in the dust. 25In the streets the sword will take their children, and inside their homes terror will strike, young men and young women alike, the nursing baby and the gray-haired. 26I would have said, “I will scatter them and wipe out their memory from among humankind,” 27but I feared the taunting of the enemy, that their foes would misunderstand and say, “Our own power has won; it was not the LORD who did all this.”’ 28For they are a nation without sense, and there is no understanding in them. 29If only they were wise, they would understand this and see what their end will be. 30How could one chase a thousand, or two drive ten thousand away, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had surrendered them? 31For their rock is not like our Rock, as even our enemies must admit. 32For their vine springs from the vine of Sodom, from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of poison, and their clusters are bitter. 33Their wine is snake venom, the deadly poison of cobras. 34‘Is this not laid up in store with me, sealed in my treasuries? 35Vengeance is mine, and repayment, for the time when their foot slips; for the day of their disaster is near, and their doom is rushing toward them.’ 36For the LORD will do justice for his people and take pity on his servants, once he sees their strength is spent and no one is left, bound or free. 37Then he will say, ‘Where are their gods, the rock they ran to for shelter, 38who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank their offerings of wine? Let them get up and help you! Let them be your shelter! 39See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god beside me. I put to death and I bring to life; I wound and I heal, and no one can rescue from my hand. 40For I raise my hand to heaven and swear: as surely as I live forever, 41when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps judgment, I will take vengeance on my foes and pay back those who hate me. 42I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will eat flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy’s long-haired leaders.’ 43Nations, shout for joy with his people, for he will avenge his servants’ blood. He will repay his foes with vengeance and make atonement for his land and his people.”

44Moses, together with Joshua son of Nun, came and recited the whole song for the people to hear. 45When Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, 46he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I am solemnly declaring to you today, so that you may command your children to be careful to do all the words of this law. 47It is no empty word for you; it is your very life. By this word you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

48On that very day the LORD said to Moses, 49“Climb Mount Nebo here in the Abarim range, in the land of Moab, facing Jericho, and look out over the land of Canaan, which I am giving the Israelites to possess. 50On the mountain you climb you will die and be gathered to your people, just as Aaron your brother, who died on Mount Hor, was gathered to his people, 51because both of you broke faith with me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribah at Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, and because you did not treat me as holy among the Israelites. 52You will see the land from a distance, but you will not enter it, the land I am giving to the Israelites.”