Deuteronomy
Chapter 32
1 Listen, heavens, and I will talk; and listen, earth, to what I say.
2 My teaching will fall like rain, my words will settle like dew, like a light rain on new plants, and like showers on the grass.
3 I will tell everyone about God’s name: say our God is great.
4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect; all His ways are fair. A God of truth, not doing wrong, just and upright is He.
5 They have made themselves bad; they are not like his children because they are a wrong and twisted group.
6 Are you repaying God like this, you foolish and senseless people? Isn’t He your father who created you? Didn’t He make and sustain you?
7 Think about the past and reflect on the years gone by. Ask your father, and he will teach you; talk to the older people, and they will explain it to you.
8 When God divided the lands among the nations, when he split up the people, he set the borders based on how many Israelites there were.
9 God’s share is his people; Jacob is the group he has chosen to receive his inheritance.
10 He found him in a desert land, in a noisy empty wilderness; he led him around, taught him, and protected him like the pupil of his eye.
11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreads its wings, takes them, and carries them on its wings.
12 God alone guided him, and there was no other god with him.
13 God let him ride on the earth’s high places, to eat the crops from the fields; God let him taste honey from the rock and oil from the hard stone.
14 Butter from cows, and sheep’s milk, with lamb’s fat, and Bashan-bred rams, and goats, with wheat’s creamy richness; and you drank grape juice, pure and rich.
15 Jeshurun grew fat and rebelled; you became fat, you got thick, you were filled with fat; then you left God who created you, and didn’t value the God who saved you.
16 They made God jealous with foreign gods, and with hateful acts they made him angry.
17 They offered sacrifices to demons, not to God; to gods they did not know, to new gods that were recently made, that your ancestors did not fear.
18 You have forgotten the God who gave you life and ignored the one who made you.
19 When God saw it, he hated them because they angered his sons and daughters.
20 He said, “I will turn away from them and see what their future holds, because they are a difficult and unfaithful generation.”
21 They made me jealous with things that are not God; they angered me with their useless actions. And I will make them jealous with those who are not a people; I will make them angry with a foolish nation.
22 My anger has started a fire that will burn to the deepest hell, destroy the earth and its crops, and set the mountain bases on fire.
23 I will bring many troubles upon them; I will use up my arrows against them.
24 They will suffer from severe hunger, extreme heat, and harsh destruction. I will also let wild animals attack them, and snakes from the ground will poison them.
25 Outside, the sword, and inside, fear, will kill the young man and the young woman, as well as the baby and the old man.
26 I said I would spread them out and make people forget them completely.
27 If I were not worried about our enemies’ anger, they might act wrongly and claim, “We won by our own power, and God didn’t do this.”
28 They are a nation without guidance, and they have no understanding.
29 If only they were wise and understood this, so they would think about their future!
30 How can one person chase a thousand, or two people make ten thousand run away, unless their protector has abandoned them and God has trapped them?
31 Their rock is not like our God, even our enemies agree.
32 Their vine comes from Sodom’s vines, and Gomorrah’s fields: their grapes are bitter, their bunches are sour.
33 Their wine is like dragon poison and very cruel snake venom.
34 Isn’t this kept with me and sealed in my treasures?
35 I am in charge of revenge and payback; their feet will slip when the time comes: because their disaster day is near, and the things that will happen to them will come quickly.
36 God will judge his people and change his mind for his servants when he sees their strength is gone and no one is confined or remaining.
37 He will ask, “Where are their gods, the rock they trusted in?”
38 Who ate the best parts of your offerings and drank your wine gifts? Let them get up and help you; let them protect you.
39 Understand now that I am the only God; there is no other god beside me. I can cause death or give life; I can injure or heal, and no one can rescue from my power.
40 I raise my hand to the sky and say, I will live forever.
41 If I sharpen my shiny sword, and my hand grabs justice, I will give payback to my enemies and repay those who hate me.
42 I will make my arrows soaked with blood, and my sword will consume flesh; with the blood of those killed and prisoners, from the first acts of revenge against the enemy.
43 Celebrate, all you nations, with God’s people, because He will take revenge for His servants’ blood, pay back His enemies, and be kind to His land and His people.
44 Moses came and told all the words of this song to the people, along with Hoshea, Nun’s son.
45 Moses finished telling all these words to all Israel.
46 He told them, “Pay close attention to everything I am telling you today. Teach your children to follow all the instructions of this law.”
47 This is not useless for you; it is your life. By doing this, you will live longer in the land you will own after crossing the Jordan.
48 On that same day, God spoke to Moses, saying,
49 Go up to Mount Abarim, to Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho; and look at the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites as their own.
50 You will die on the mountain you are climbing and join your ancestors, just like your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and joined his ancestors.
51 Because you disobeyed me among the Israelites at Meribah-Kadesh, in the Zin desert; because you did not honor me in front of the Israelites.
52 You will see the land in front of you, but you will not enter the land I am giving to the children of Israel.