Song of Moses
32
📚Listen, O heavens, and I will speak;
and hear, O earth, the words
of my mouth.
2 📚My teaching will drop like the rain,
my speech will distill
like the dew,
like the fine rain
on the tender plant,
and like the showers
on the grass,
3 📚because I will proclaim
the name of the LORD.
Ascribe greatness to our God.
4 📚He is the Rock 📖,
his work is perfect 📖;
for all his ways are just.
A God of truth and
without iniquity,
just 📖 and upright is he.
5 📚They have corrupted themselves;
this is their defect.
They are not his children.
They are a perverse and
crooked generation.
32:5 The majority of the people, though called to be God’s special people among all who lived on the earth, were not true believers and so individually not children of God. This was true also in the time of the Lord Jesus (Matt 17:17; John 8:42-45; Acts 2:40). This verse could also be translated “Corrupt are they and not His children, a generation warped and twisted to their shame”.⚜
6 📚Is this the way you repay the LORD,
O foolish and unwise people?
Is he not your father who
has bought you?
Has he not made you
and established you?
32:6 As a nation God was their father who created them and brought them out of Egypt. But individually most of them neither trusted Him nor behaved as His children. In similar fashion, today the visible Church is made up of professing Christians, but not all are true believers.⚜
7 📚Remember the days of old;
consider the years,
the many generations.
Ask your father,
and he will inform you.
Ask your elders, and
they will tell you.
8 📚When the Most High gave
to the nations their inheritance,
when he separated
the sons of Adam,
he set the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number
of the children of Israel.
9 📚For the LORD’s portion is
his people.
Jacob is his allotted inheritance.
10 📚He found him in a desert land,
and in the waste and
howling wilderness.
He led him about,
he instructed him,
he kept him as the apple
of his eye.
11 📚As an eagle stirs up her nest,
flutters over her young,
spreads out her wings,
takes them,
carries them on her wings,
12 📚so the LORD alone led him,
and no foreign god was
with him.
13 📚He made him ride on the high places
of the earth,
so that he might eat
the produce of the fields;
and he made him to suck honey
from the rock,
and fed him with oil
from the flinty rock,
14 📚cattle butter, and sheep’s milk,
with the fat of lambs,
and rams of the breed
of Bashan,
and goats, with the fat of kernels
of wheat.
And you drank the pure blood
of the grape.
15 📚But Jeshurun became fat,
and kicked.
You have become fat,
you have grown thick,
you are covered with fatness.
Then he forsook God who made him,
and lightly regarded the Rock
of his salvation.
16 📚They made him jealous
with foreign gods,
they provoked him to anger with abominations.
17 📚They sacrificed to demons,
not to God;
to gods whom
they did not know,
to new gods that came up recently,
whom your fathers did not fear.
32:17 A very significant verse indicating that the gods other than the one true God, the Creator of the universe, are demons. See also Lev 17:7; 1 Cor 10:20. At the temptation of Christ Satan revealed that worship is what he desires (Matt 4:9-10).⚜
18 📚You ignored the Rock
who gave you birth,
and forgot God who formed you.
32:18 Here the nation is viewed collectively.⚜
19 📚And when the LORD saw this,
he abhorred them, because
of the provocation of his sons,
and of his daughters.
20 📚And he said,
“I will hide my face from them.
I will see what their end will be;
for they are a very perverse
generation,
children in whom is no faith.
21 📚They have made me jealous
with that which is not God.
They have provoked me to anger
with their vanities.
So I will make them jealous with those
who are not a people. 📖
I will provoke them to anger
with a foolish nation.
32:21 See notes on jealousy and idolatry at Ex 20:4-6, on anger at Num 25:3. See 1 Kings 15:30; 1 Kings 16:13, 26.⚜
22 📚For a fire has been kindled in my anger,
and will burn to the realm of the dead 📖,
and will consume the earth
with its produce,
and set the foundations
of the mountains on fire.
23 📚“I will heap disasters on them.
I will use up my arrows on them.
24 📚They will waste away
with hunger, and be devoured
with burning heat,
and with bitter destruction.
I will also send the teeth of beasts
on them, and the poison
of the serpents of the dust.
25 📚The sword outside and terror inside
will destroy both the young man
and the virgin,
the sucking infant along
with the man of gray hairs.
26 📚I almost said that
I would shatter them to pieces,
I would cause the memory of them
to cease from among men,
27 📚but I feared the provocation
of the enemy,
lest their adversaries should miscalculate
and say,
‘We have the upper hand,
and the LORD has not done all this.’
28 📚For they are a nation lacking counsel,
there is no understanding in them.
29 📚O that they were wise,
that they understood this,
that they would consider
their final end!”
30 📚How could one chase a thousand,
and two put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
and the LORD had given them up?
31 📚For their rock is not
as our Rock, as even our enemies
themselves judge.
32:31 Verse 4; Ex 14:25.⚜
32 📚For their vine is from the vine
of Sodom, and of the fields
of Gomorrah.
Their grapes are grapes
of gall, their clusters are bitter.
33 📚Their wine is the poison
of snakes and the cruel venom
of cobras.
34 📚The LORD says
“Is this not stored up
with me,
and sealed up in my treasuries?
32:34 There is a place where the deeds of men are recorded and kept (Rev 20:12)⚜
35 📚Vengeance belongs to me,
and retribution.
Their foot will slide in due time,
because the day of their calamity
is at hand, and the things that
will come on them approach quickly”.
36 📚For the LORD will judge his people
and have compassion on his servants,
when he sees that their
power is gone, and there is
no one left, slave or free.
37 📚And he will say,
“Where are
their gods, their rock in
whom they trusted,
38 📚Who ate the fat of their sacrifices,
and drank the wine
of their drink offerings?
Let them rise up and help you,
and be your protection.
39 📚“See now that I,
I alone am he,
and there is no god
besides me 📖.
I kill, and I make alive 📖;
I wound, and I heal;
and there is no one
who can deliver out of my hand 📖.
40 📚For I lift up my hand to heaven,
and say, I live for ever.
41 📚If I sharpen my glittering sword,
and my hand takes hold
of judgment,
I will take vengeance
on my enemies,
and will repay those
who hate me.
42 📚I will make my arrows drunk
with blood, and my sword will
devour flesh,
the blood of the slain and
of the captives,
and the heads of the leaders of the enemy”.
with his people;
for he will avenge the blood
of his servants,
and will take vengeance
on his adversaries,
and be merciful to his land,
and to his people.
The importance of keeping God’s law
44 📚And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he, and Joshua the son of Nun. 45 And Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel, 46 📚and said to them, Take to your hearts all the words which I solemnly declare among you today, which you will command your children to be careful to do, all the words of this law. 47 📚For this is not an empty word for you; because it is your life; and through this word you will live long in the land, which you will cross the Jordan to possess.
God speaks of Moses’ death
48 📚And that same day the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 49 📚“Go up into this mountain range of Abarim, to mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho, and see the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel as a possession. 50 📚And you will die on the mountain which you climb, and be gathered to your people, just as Aaron your brother died in mount Hor and was gathered to his people; 51 📚because both of you were unfaithful to me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh in the desert of Zin, because you did not show me to be holy in the midst of the children of Israel. 52 📚So you will see the land before you, but you will not go there, to the land which I give to the children of Israel”.