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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.

36. For the Lord shall judge his people. Some connect this sentence with what precedes it, and thus take the word judge for to punish, and the Apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews, seems to support their opinion, inasmuch as he proves by this testimony how fearful a thing it is “to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews10:30, 31.) But there is no reason why the Apostle should not have accommodated to a different purpose what was set forth by Moses for the consolation of the godly, in order that believers might be the more heedful, the nearer they saw God to show Himself as the Judge of His Church; unless it be perhaps preferred to construe the words of Moses thus: Although God should judge His people, yet at length He will be propitiated, or touched with repentance, so as to temper the vehemence of His anger. Whichever way we understand them will be of little difference in the main; for, after Moses has threatened the despisers of God, and the apostates, who desire to be accounted members of His household the Church, he now turns to the strangers and denounces against them that the cruelty which they have exercised towards the Israelites shall not be unpunished, because God will at length be mindful of His covenant, and will pardon His elect people. If you take the word judge for to govern, or to undertake their cause, the particle for must be rendered adversatively, as though it were said nevertheless or but; if we prefer the other sense, it will be equivalent to although, or even though. Doubtless the object of Moses is to encourage the hopes of the pious, who have profited by God’s chastisement, by showing that He will mitigate His severity towards His elect people, and in His wrath will remember mercy. (Habakkuk 3:2.) Thus, then, Moses here teaches the same thing which God afterwards more clearly unfolded to David:

“If thy children forsake my law,... I will visit their transgressions with the rod of man,... nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not take away from them,” etc. ²⁸⁷²⁸⁷ C. evidently quoted from memory, and amalgamated the two citations. (Psalm 89:30, 33; 2 Samuel 7:14, 15.)

For nothing is more fitted to sustain us in afflictions than when God promises that there shall be some limit to them, so that He will not utterly destroy those whom He has chosen. Whenever, therefore, the ills which we suffer tempt us to despair, let this lesson recur to our minds, that the punishments, wherewith God chastises His children, are temporary, since His promise will never fail that “his anger endureth but a moment,” (Psalm 30:5,) whilst the flow of His mercy is continual. Hence, too, that lesson which is especially directed to the Church: ²⁸⁸²⁸⁸ Here also the substance, and not the words of the passage, are given.

“For a moment I afflicted thee, but I will pursue my mercies towards thee for ever.” (Isaiah 54:8.)

He here calls them His servants, not because they had deserved His pardon by their obedience, but because He condescends to acknowledge them as His own; for this honor has reference to His gratuitous election; as when David says, “I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid,” (Psalm 116:16,) he assuredly arrogates nothing peculiar to himself; but only boasts that he from the womb had been of God’s family, just as slaves are born in the house of their masters. At the same time we must observe that, whenever God declares that He will be merciful to His servants, he only refers to those who heartily seek for reconciliation, and not to the reprobate, who are carried away to destruction by their desperate obstinacy. In short, to the end that God should repent of His severity, repentance is required on the part of sinners; as he teaches elsewhere:

“Turn ye unto me,... and I will turn unto you.”
(Zechariah 1:3.)

Instead of shall repent, some translate the word, shall console himself. ²⁸⁹²⁸⁹ LXX Παρακληθήσεται V. “miserebitur.” Addition in Fr., “Le mot de repentir s’accorde mieux au stile de l’Escriture;” the word repent accords best with the style of Scripture. Jerome, regarding the drift of the passage rather than the meaning of the word, translates it shall have mercy.

We must, however, remark the time which God prefixes for the exertion of His grace, viz., when all their power (virtus) shall have departed from them, and all shall be reduced to almost entire destruction; for the word hand is used for vigor; ²⁹⁰²⁹⁰ Vide margin, A. V. as though it were said that God would be by no means content with a light chastisement, and consequently would not be appeased until they should have come to extremities. This circumstance is well worthy of notice, so flint our hopes may not fail us even in the most severe afflictions of the Church; but that we may be assured that although all may be in the worst state possible, still the due season of reparation will come even yet.

That none should remain behind, or shut up or left, is almost a proverbial phrase in Hebrew; as when it is said, (1 Kings 14:10,) “I will cut off from Jeroboam,... him that is shut up and left in Israel,” i.e., as well in the city as in the country, or at home as abroad. And this is again repeated respecting the posterity of Ahab. (Ibid. 21:21.) And hence it is plain that they are mistaken ²⁹¹²⁹¹ This notion is attributed in Poole to “many of the Hebrews, and Malvenda.” who explain this as referring to riches shut up in treasure-houses, and cattle dispersed through the fields. And this will be still more apparent from another passage in which the Prophet unquestionably referred to this, “The Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter; for there was not any shut up, nor any left,” and inasmuch as He had not determined to blot out His people,” he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam;” as much as to say, that God, as He had promised, had pity upon His people in their extreme destitution. (2 Kings 14:26, 27.)

²⁸⁷ C. evidently quoted from memory, and amalgamated the two citations.

²⁸⁸ Here also the substance, and not the words of the passage, are given.

²⁸⁹ LXX Παρακληθήσεται V. “miserebitur.” Addition in Fr., “Le mot de repentir s’accorde mieux au stile de l’Escriture;” the word repent accords best with the style of Scripture.

²⁹⁰ Vide margin, A. V.

²⁹¹ This notion is attributed in Poole to “many of the Hebrews, and Malvenda.”