Deuteronomy 32

Give heed, O heaven, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words from my mouth.

Let my utterance be awaited like rain, and let my words come down like dew, like a shower upon the herbage and like snowfall upon the grass.

For I have called on the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God.

He is God; his works are true, and all his ways are judgments. A faithful God, and there is no injustice in him; righteous and holy is the Lord.

They have sinned; they are not his. They are blemished children, a crooked and perverse generation.

Do you thus repay the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is he not himself your father? He acquired you and made you and created you.

Remember the days of old; consider the years of generation upon generation. Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will say to you.

When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.

And the Lord's portion became his people Jacob; Israel is the measured line of his inheritance.

He sustained him in a desert land, in the thirst of heat, in a waterless place; he encircled him and instructed him and guarded him as the pupil of an eye.

As an eagle shelters its nest and yearns over its young, spreading out its wings it received them and took them up upon its back.

The Lord alone led them, and there was no foreign god with them.

He brought them up onto the strength of the land; he fed them the produce of the fields. They sucked honey out of the rock and oil out of the hard rock.

Butter of cattle and milk of sheep, with the fat of lambs and of rams, of the young of bulls and of he-goats, with the fat of the kidneys of wheat; and they drank the blood of the grape, wine.

And Jacob ate and was filled, and the beloved one kicked. He grew fat, he grew thick, he grew broad; and he forsook God who made him and departed from God his saviour.

They provoked me with strange gods; with their abominations they embittered me.

They sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods whom they did not know, new ones recently come, whom their fathers did not know.

You forsook God who begot you and forgot God who nourishes you.

And the Lord saw and was jealous, and was provoked to anger because of his sons and daughters.

And he said: I will turn my face away from them and will show what their end shall be; for they are a perverse generation, sons in whom there is no faithfulness.

They made me jealous with what is no god; they provoked me to anger with their idols. And I will make them jealous with what is no nation; with a foolish nation I will provoke them to anger.

For a fire has been kindled out of my wrath; it shall burn down to Hades below; it shall devour the earth and its produce, and shall set ablaze the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap evils upon them and will spend my arrows upon them.

They shall waste away with hunger and be devoured by birds and struck with an incurable spasm; I will send against them the teeth of wild beasts, with the venom of things crawling on the ground.

Outside the sword shall bereave them of children, and out of the inner chambers there shall be terror: young man with virgin, nursing infant with the aged elder.

I said: I will scatter them; I will make their memorial cease from among men.

Except for the wrath of the enemies, lest they live long and lest the adversaries join together and say: Our hand is exalted, and it is not the Lord who has done all these things.

For they are a nation that has lost counsel, and there is no understanding in them.

They had no mind to understand these things; let them accept it for the time to come.

How could one pursue a thousand and two move ten thousands, unless God had sold them and the Lord had handed them over?

For their gods are not like our God; but our enemies are without understanding.

For their vine is from the vine of Sodom, and their branch is from Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are of bitterness to them.

Their wine is the venom of serpents and the incurable venom of asps.

Are not these things stored up with me and sealed in my treasuries?

In the day of vengeance I will repay, at the time when their foot slips; for the day of their destruction is near, and the things prepared for you are at hand.

For the Lord will judge his people and will be comforted concerning his servants; for he saw them paralysed and failing under affliction and enfeebled.

And the Lord said: Where are their gods, in whom they trusted,

whose sacrificial fat you were eating and whose libation wine you were drinking? Let them rise up and help you and become protectors for you.

See, see that I am he, and there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I strike and I also heal; and there is no one who can deliver out of my hands.

For I will lift up my hand to heaven and will swear by my right hand and will say: As I live for ever,

I will sharpen my sword like lightning, and my hand shall take hold of judgment; and I will render vengeance to my enemies and will repay those who hate me.

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

Rejoice, O heavens, together with him, and let all the sons of God worship him. Rejoice, O nations, with his people, and let all the angels of God be strong for him; for he avenges the blood of his sons, and he will take vengeance and render vengeance to his enemies, and to those who hate him he will repay; and the Lord will cleanse the land of his people.

And Moses wrote this song on that day and taught it to the sons of Israel. And Moses went in and spoke all the words of this law in the ears of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun.

And Moses finished speaking to all Israel.

And he said to them: Set your heart on all these words which I testify to you today, which you shall command your sons to keep and to do, all the words of this law.

For this is no empty word for you; it is your life, and because of this word you shall live long upon the land into which you are crossing the Jordan there to inherit it.

And the Lord spoke to Moses on that day, saying:

Go up onto this mountain Abarim, this mountain Nabau, which is in the land of Moab opposite Jericho, and see the land of Canaan which I am giving to the sons of Israel for a possession.

And die on the mountain to which you are going up there, and be gathered to your people, in the way that Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people;

because you disobeyed my word among the sons of Israel at the water of Contention of Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, because you did not sanctify me among the sons of Israel.

For you shall see the land from opposite, but you shall not enter there.