Deuteronomy 32:1-43

1Listen, you heavens, and I will speak; hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.

2Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.

3I will proclaim the name of the LORD . Oh, praise the greatness of our God!

4He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.

5They are corrupt and not his children; to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation.

6Is this the way you repay the LORD, you foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, Or Father, who bought you who made you and formed you?

7Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.

8When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scrolls (see also Septuagint) sons of God

9For the LORD ’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.

10In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye,

11like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them aloft.

12The LORD alone led him; no foreign god was with him.

13He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him with the fruit of the fields. He nourished him with honey from the rock, and with oil from the flinty crag,

14with curds and milk from herd and flock and with fattened lambs and goats, with choice rams of Bashan and the finest kernels of wheat. You drank the foaming blood of the grape.

15Jeshurun Jeshurun means the upright one, that is, Israel. grew fat and kicked; filled with food, they became heavy and sleek. They abandoned the God who made them and rejected the Rock their Savior.

16They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols.

17They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God— gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your ancestors did not fear.

18You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.

19The LORD saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters.

20“I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful.

21They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.

22For a fire will be kindled by my wrath, one that burns down to the realm of the dead below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains.

23“I will heap calamities on them and spend my arrows against them.

24I will send wasting famine against them, consuming pestilence and deadly plague; I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts, the venom of vipers that glide in the dust.

25In the street the sword will make them childless; in their homes terror will reign. The young men and young women will perish, the infants and those with gray hair.

26I said I would scatter them and erase their name from human memory,

27but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest the adversary misunderstand and say, ‘Our hand has triumphed; the LORD has not done all this.’ ”

28They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them.

29If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be!

30How could one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had given them up?

31For their rock is not like our Rock, as even our enemies concede.

32Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are filled with poison, and their clusters with bitterness.

33Their wine is the venom of serpents, the deadly poison of cobras.

34“Have I not kept this in reserve and sealed it in my vaults?

35It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”

36The LORD will vindicate his people and relent concerning his servants when he sees their strength is gone and no one is left, slave or free. Or and they are without a ruler or leader

37He will say: “Now where are their gods, the rock they took refuge in,

38the gods who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up to help you! Let them give you shelter!

39“See now that I myself am he! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.

40I lift my hand to heaven and solemnly swear: As surely as I live forever,

41when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me.

42I will make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy leaders.”

43Rejoice, you nations, with his people, Or Make his people rejoice, you nations Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scrolls (see also Septuagint) people, / and let all the angels worship him, / for he will avenge the blood of his servants; he will take vengeance on his enemies and make atonement for his land and people.