Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;

let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

May my teaching drop like the rain,

my speech condense like the dew;

like gentle rain on grass,

like showers on new growth.

For I will proclaim the name of the L ord;

ascribe greatness to our God!

The Rock, his work is perfect,

and all his ways are just.

A faithful God, without deceit,

just and upright is he;

yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him,

a perverse and crooked generation.

Do you thus repay the L ord,

O foolish and senseless people?

Is not he your father, who created you,

who made you and established you?

Remember the days of old,

consider the years long past;

ask your father, and he will inform you;

your elders, and they will tell you.

When the Most High apportioned the nations,

when he divided humankind,

he fixed the boundaries of the peoples

according to the number of the gods;

the L ord’s own portion was his people,

Jacob his allotted share.

He sustained him in a desert land,

in a howling wilderness waste;

he shielded him, cared for him,

guarded him as the apple of his eye.

As an eagle stirs up its nest,

and hovers over its young;

as it spreads its wings, takes them up,

and bears them aloft on its pinions,

the L ord alone guided him;

no foreign god was with him.

He set him atop the heights of the land,

and fed him with produce of the field;

he nursed him with honey from the crags,

with oil from flinty rock;

curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,

with fat of lambs and rams;

Bashan bulls and goats,

together with the choicest wheat—

you drank fine wine from the blood of grapes.

Jacob ate his fill;

Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked.

You grew fat, bloated, and gorged!

He abandoned God who made him,

and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.

They made him jealous with strange gods,

with abhorrent things they provoked him.

They sacrificed to demons, not God,

to deities they had never known,

to new ones recently arrived,

whom your ancestors had not feared.

You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you;

you forgot the God who gave you birth.

The L ord saw it, and was jealous;

he spurned his sons and daughters.

He said: I will hide my face from them,

I will see what their end will be;

for they are a perverse generation,

children in whom there is no faithfulness.

They made me jealous with what is no god,

provoked me with their idols.

So I will make them jealous with what is no people,

provoke them with a foolish nation.

For a fire is kindled by my anger,

and burns to the depths of Sheol;

it devours the earth and its increase,

and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap disasters upon them,

spend my arrows against them:

wasting hunger,

burning consumption,

bitter pestilence.

The teeth of beasts I will send against them,

with venom of things crawling in the dust.

In the street the sword shall bereave,

and in the chambers terror,

for young man and woman alike,

nursing child and old gray head.

I thought to scatter them

and blot out the memory of them from humankind;

but I feared provocation by the enemy,

for their adversaries might misunderstand

and say, “Our hand is triumphant;

it was not the L ord who did all this.”

They are a nation void of sense;

there is no understanding in them.

If they were wise, they would understand this;

they would discern what the end would be.

How could one have routed a thousand,

and two put a myriad to flight,

unless their Rock had sold them,

the L ord had given them up?

Indeed their rock is not like our Rock;

our enemies are fools.

Their vine comes from the vinestock of Sodom,

from the vineyards of Gomorrah;

their grapes are grapes of poison,

their clusters are bitter;

their wine is the poison of serpents,

the cruel venom of asps.

Is not this laid up in store with me,

sealed up in my treasuries?

Vengeance is mine, and recompense,

for the time when their foot shall slip;

because the day of their calamity is at hand,

their doom comes swiftly.

Indeed the L ord will vindicate his people,

have compassion on his servants,

when he sees that their power is gone,

neither bond nor free remaining.

Then he will say: Where are their gods,

the rock in which they took refuge,

who ate the fat of their sacrifices,

and drank the wine of their libations?

Let them rise up and help you,

let them be your protection!

See now that I, even I, am he;

there is no god besides me.

I kill and I make alive;

I wound and I heal;

and no one can deliver from my hand.

For I lift up my hand to heaven,

and swear: As I live forever,

when I whet my flashing sword,

and my hand takes hold on judgment;

I will take vengeance on my adversaries,

and will repay those who hate me.

I will make my arrows drunk with blood,

and my sword shall devour flesh—

with the blood of the slain and the captives,

from the long-haired enemy.

Praise, O heavens, his people,

worship him, all you gods!

For he will avenge the blood of his children,

and take vengeance on his adversaries;

he will repay those who hate him,

and cleanse the land for his people.

⁴⁴ Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua son of Nun. ⁴⁵When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, ⁴⁶he said to them: “Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. ⁴⁷This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.”

Moses’ Death Foretold

⁴⁸ On that very day the L ord addressed Moses as follows: ⁴⁹“Ascend this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, across from Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites for a possession; ⁵⁰you shall die there on the mountain that you ascend and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin; ⁵¹because both of you broke faith with me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to maintain my holiness among the Israelites. ⁵²Although you may view the land from a distance, you shall not enter it—the land that I am giving to the Israelites.”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

30. How should one chase a thousand. Of all the many tokens of God’s wrath, he selects one which was peculiarly striking; for as long as God was on their side, they had put to flight mighty armies, nor had they been supported by any multitude of forces. Now, when, though in great numbers, they are conquered by a few, this change plainly shows that they are deprived of God’s aid, especially when a thousand, who were wont before, with a little band, to rout the greatest armies, gave way before ten men. Moses, therefore, condemns the stupidity of the people, in that it does not occur to their minds that they are rejected by God, when they are so easily overcome by a few enemies, whom they far exceed in numbers. Moses, however, goes still further, and says, that they were sold and betrayed; ²⁷⁹²⁷⁹ “Shut them up.” — A. V. inasmuch as God, having so often found them to be unworthy of His aid, not only deserted them, but made them subject to heathen nations, and, as it were, sold them to be their slaves. This threat is often repeated by the prophets: and Isaiah, desiring to awake in them a hope of deliverance, tells them that God would redeem the people whom He had sold. ²⁸⁰²⁸⁰ The reference is here generally to Isaiah 52:3, however, to which C. probably alludes, hardly bears out the statement in the text: “Ye have sold yourselves for nought, etc. The Fr. stands thus, ”Isaie, en parlant du retour de la captivite de Babylone, dit que Dieu rachetera le peuple qu’il a vendu.” But, in case any should object that it was no matter of wonder, if the uncertain chance of war should confer on others the victory which often, as a profane poet says,

“Hovers between the two on doubtful wings,” ²⁸¹²⁸¹
diuque
Inter utrumque volat dubiis Victoria pennis.
Ovid, Metam. viii. 11, 12.

Moses anticipates the objection by declaring that, unless the people should be deprived of God’s aid, they could not be otherwise than successful. A comparison is therefore instituted between the true God and false gods: as though Moses had said that, where the God of hosts presides, the issue of war can never be doubtful. Hence it follows, that God’s elect and peculiar people are exempted from the ordinary condition of nations, except in so far as it deserves to be rejected on the score of its ingratitude. He calls the unbelievers themselves to be the arbiters and witnesses of this, inasmuch as they had often experienced the formidable power of God, and knew assuredly that the God of Israel was unlike their idols. It is, then, just as if he had said, that this was conspicuous even to the blind, or were to cite as witnesses those who are blessed with no light from on high. In thus inviting unbelievers to be judges, it is not as if he supposed that they would pronounce what was true, and thoroughly understood by them, but because they must needs be convinced by experience: for, if any one had asked the heathen whether the supreme government and power of heaven and earth were in the hands of the One God of Israel, they never would have confessed that their idols were mere vanity. Still, however malignantly they might detract from God’s glory, Moses does not hesitate to boast, even themselves being judges, that God had magnificently exerted His unconquered might; although he refers rather to the experience of facts themselves, than to their feelings. Other commentators extract a different meaning, viz., that although unbelievers might be victorious, still God remained unaffected by it: neither was his arm broken, because he permitted them to afflict the apostate Israelites: ²⁸²²⁸² This is the view of S.M. “Although our enemies now be our judges, this they have not from their own gods, but from our God, who has delivered us into their hands.” the former exposition, however, is the more appropriate one.

²⁷⁹ “Shut them up.” — A. V.

²⁸⁰ The reference is here generally to Isaiah 52:3, however, to which C. probably alludes, hardly bears out the statement in the text: “Ye have sold yourselves for nought, etc. The Fr. stands thus, ”Isaie, en parlant du retour de la captivite de Babylone, dit que Dieu rachetera le peuple qu’il a vendu.”

²⁸¹ diuque Inter utrumque volat dubiis Victoria pennis. Ovid, Metam. viii. 11, 12.

²⁸² This is the view of S.M. “Although our enemies now be our judges, this they have not from their own gods, but from our God, who has delivered us into their hands.”