Deuteronomy 32 : Christian Community Bible
Deuteronomy 32
| 1 Listen, O heavens, as I speak; hear, earth, the words of my mouth. | |
| 2 May my teaching be drenching as the rain, and my words, permeate gently as the dew: like abundant rain upon the grass, like a gentle shower on the tender crops. | |
| 3 For I will proclaim the name of the Lord and declare the greatness of our God. | |
| 4 He is the Rock, and perfect are all his works, just are all his ways. A faithful God he is, upright and just and unerring. | |
| 5 Yet he has been treated perversely by his degenerate children – a deceitful and crooked generation. | |
| 6 Is this how you repay the Lord, you foolish and senseless people? He is your father, your creator, who formed you and set you up. | |
| 7 Recall the days of old, think of the years gone by; your father will teach you about them, your elders will enlighten you. | |
| 8 When the Most High divided humankind and gave the nations their inheritance, he set up boundaries for the peoples after the number of the sons of God. | |
| 9 But the Lord keeps for himself his portion Jacob, his chosen one. | |
| 10 In the wilderness he found them, in a barren, howling wasteland; he shielded them and cared for them as the apple of his eye. | |
| 11 Like an eagle watching its nest, hovering over its young, supporting them on its spread wings and carrying them on its pinions, | |
| 12 the Lord alone led them, without the aid of a foreign god. | |
| 13 He made them ride on the heights and live on the produce of the earth. He gave them honey to suck from the rock, olive oil from the hard stony crag, | |
| 14 curds from the herd, milk from the flock, fattened lambs and goats and Bashan bulls, the finest wheat and the best grape wine. | |
| 15 Israel grew up well nourished – you were fat, heavy and overfed. But they abandoned God, their creator; they rejected the rock, their savior. | |
| 16 They made him jealous with their strange gods; they angered him with their abominable deeds. | |
| 17 They sacrificed not to him but to the demons, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods they feared but which their ancestors never revered. | |
| 18 They have disowned the Rock who fathered them; they have forgotten the God who gave them birth. | |
| 19 The Lord saw this, and in his anger rejected his sons and daughters. | |
| 20 He said, “I will hide my face from them and see what will become of them. They are so perverse, so unfaithful! | |
| 21 They made me jealous with their false gods and angered me with their idols. I will, therefore, make them envious of a foolish people, I will provoke them to anger with an empty-headed nation. | |
| 22 For my wrath has kindled a fire, burning the world of death to its depths, devouring the earth and its harvests, setting ablaze the foundations of the mountains. | |
| 23 I will send them trouble upon trouble and spend all my arrows upon them; | |
| 24 I will afflict them with famine, deadly diseases and pestilence. I will send them wild beasts and venomous snakes. | |
| 25 Their children will fall by the sword; terror shall reign within, destroying both young man and virgin, both the nursing child and the old man. | |
| 26 I said I would scatter them afar and blot out their memory among humankind, | |
| 27 but I feared the enemy’s boasting, lest the adversary misunderstand and say; ‘We have triumphed, the Lord has not brought this about.’ | |
| 28 They are a senseless and undiscerning nation. Had they wisdom, they would have known | |
| 29 the meaning of this and the end awaiting them. | |
| 30 For how could one or two men put to flight a thousand or ten thousand, unless their Rock had abandoned them, unless their Lord had given them up? | |
| 31 Even our enemies understand this: their rock indeed is not like our Rock: | |
| 32 They are an offshoot of Sodom’s vinestock, an outgrowth from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are poison, their clusters bitter, | |
| 33 their wine contains venom from the cruel fangs of deadly vipers. | |
| 34 I have kept this in reserve and sealed up in my storehouse. | |
| 35 Vengeance and recompense is mine. Their feet will slip in due time, their day of calamity is at hand, and swiftly their doom will come. | |
| 36 The Lord will give justice to his people and have mercy on his servants, when he sees their strength failing and both slave and free disappearing. | |
| 37 He will say, “Where are their gods, the rock they thought could be their refuge, | |
| 38 who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their libations? Let them rise up now and help you, let them give you protection! | |
| 39 Learn this now – that I alone am He; there is no god besides me. It is I who give both death and life; it is I who wound and heal as well and out of my hand no one can deliver. | |
| 40 I raise my hand to heaven and swear: as truly as I live forever, | |
| 41 when I sharpen my glittering sword and my hand takes hold of judgment, I will deal out vengeance upon my foes and retribution upon those who hate me. | |
| 42 My arrows will drip with blood, my sword will sink deep into the flesh – blood of the wounded and slain captives, flesh of beheaded enemy leaders. | |
| 43 Rejoice, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge his servants’ blood, take vengeance on his adversaries, and perform the rite of expiation for his people and his land. | |
| 44 Moses recited the words of this song in the hearing of the people, and Joshua, son of Nun, was with him. | |
| 45 When Moses had finished reciting these words to all Israel, | |
| 46 he said to them, “Be attentive to all these words which I declare to you today. Repeat them to your children so that they may take care to put all these laws into practice. | |
| 47 It is no slight matter: on this depends your life, and by this, you shall lengthen your days in the land you are going to conquer after crossing the Jordan.” | |
| 48 Yahweh spoke to Moses on that same day and he said: | |
| 49 “Go up to the mountains of Abarim in the land of Moab and climb Mount Nebo facing Jericho. From there you shall see the land of Canaan which I give to the children of Israel. | |
| 50 Then you shall die on Mount Nebo and join your fathers as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and went to join them. | |
| 51 Remember that you did not trust me at the waters of Meribah in the desert of Zion, when you did not proclaim me before the Israelites. | |
| 52 Therefore you shall not enter the Land, but shall only see it from afar.” |