Deuteronomy Chapter 32
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
A canticle for the remembrance of the law. Moses is commanded to go up into a mountain, from whence he shall see the promised land but not enter into it.
32:1. Hear, O ye heavens, the things I speak, let the earth give ear to the words of my mouth.
32:2. Let my doctrine gather as the rain, let my speech distil as the dew, as a shower upon the herb, and as drops upon the grass.
32:3. Because I will invoke the name of the Lord: give ye magnificence to our God.
32:4. The works of God are perfect, and all his ways are judgments: God is faithful and without any iniquity, he is just and right.
32:5. They have sinned against him, and are none of his children in their filth: they are a wicked and perverse generation.
32:6. Is this the return thou makest to the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he thy father, that hath possessed thee, and made thee, and created thee?
32:7. Remember the days of old, think upon every generation: ask thy father, and he will declare to thee: thy elders and they will tell thee.
32:8. When the Most High divided the nations: when he separated the sons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel.
32:9. But the Lord’s portion is his people: Jacob the lot of his inheritance.
32:10. He found him in a desert land, in a place of horror, and of vast wilderness: he led him about, and taught him: and he kept him as the apple of his eye.
32:11. As the eagle enticing her young to fly, and hovering over them, he spread his wings, and hath taken him and carried him on his shoulders.
32:12. The Lord alone was his leader: and there was no strange god with him.
32:13. He set him upon high land: that he might eat the fruits of the fields, that he might suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hardest stone,
32:14. Butter of the herd, and milk of the sheep with the fat of lambs, and of the rams of the breed of Basan: and goats with the marrow of wheat, and might drink the purest blood of the grape.
32:15. The beloved grew fat, and kicked: he grew fat, and thick and gross, he forsook God who made him, and departed from God his saviour.
32:16. They provoked him by strange gods, and stirred him up to anger, with their abominations.
32:17. They sacrificed to devils and not to God: to gods whom they knew not: that were newly come up, whom their fathers worshipped not.
32:18. Thou hast forsaken the God that begot thee, and hast forgotten the Lord that created thee.
32:19. The Lord saw, and was moved to wrath: because his own sons and daughters provoked him.
32:20. And he said: I will hide my face from them, and will consider what their last end shall be: for it is a perverse generation, and unfaithful children.
32:21. They have provoked me with that which was no god, and have angered me with their vanities: and I will provoke them with that which is no people, and will vex them with a foolish nation.
32:22. A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell: and shall devour the earth with her increase, and shall burn the foundations of the mountains.
32:23. I will heap evils upon them, and will spend my arrows among them.
32:24. They shall be consumed with famine, and birds shall devour them with a most bitter bite: I will send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the fury of creatures that trail upon the ground, and of serpents.
32:25. Without, the sword shall lay them waste, and terror within, both the young man and the virgin, the sucking child with the man in years.
32:26. I said: Where are they? I will make the memory of them to cease from among men.
32:27. But for the wrath of the enemies I have deferred it: lest perhaps their enemies might be proud, and should say: Our mighty hand, and not the Lord, hath done all these things.
32:28. They are a nation without counsel, and without wisdom.
32:29. O that they would be wise and would understand, and would provide for their last end.
32:30. How should one pursue after a thousand, and two chase ten thousand? Was it not, because their God had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up?
32:31. For our God is not as their gods: our enemies themselves are judges.
32:32. Their vines are of the vineyard of Sodom, and of the suburbs of Gomorrha: their grapes are grapes of gall, and their clusters most bitter.
32:33. Their wine is the gall of dragons, and the venom of asps, which is incurable.
32:34. Are not these things stored up with me, and sealed up in my treasures?
32:35. Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide: the day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to come.
32:36. The Lord will judge his people, and will have mercy on his servants: he shall see that their hand is weakened, and that they who were shut up have also failed, and they that remained are consumed.
32:37. And he shall say: Where are their gods, in whom they trusted?
32:38. Of whose victims they ate the fat, and drank the wine of their drink offerings: let them arise and help you, and protect you in your distress.
32:39. See ye that I alone am, and there is no other God besides me: I will kill and I will make to live: I will strike, and I will heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.