Deuteronomy 32 — FBV
32Verse 1Heaven, listen as I speak; Earth, hear what I'm saying.Verse 2May my teaching fall gently like the rain; may my words drop lightly like the dew, like soft rain on new grass, like spring showers on growing plants.Verse 3I will praise the Lord's character. Tell everyone how great he is!Verse 4He is the Rock. Everything he does is perfect, for all his ways are right. He is the trustworthy God who is never unjust; he is fair and honest.Verse 5His children have acted immorally towards him; so they are no longer his children because of their sinful stains. They are a perverse and corrupt people.Verse 6Is this any way to repay the Lord, you foolish, stupid people? Isn't he your Father who created you? Isn't he the one who turned you into a nation and made you strong?Verse 7Remember the olden days; think about the generations of the past. Go and ask your father about them, and he will explain them to you. Talk to your elders, and they will tell you what you need to know.Verse 8The Most High gave the nations their lands when he divided the human race; he fixed their borders depending on their gods.+Verse 9But the Lord's people are his, Israel is his chosen one.Verse 10He found you in a desert land, in a desolate wasteland of whirlwinds. He protected you; he cared for you; he looked after you as the one he loved the most.+Verse 11Like an eagle watching over+its nest, hovering over its chicks, he spread his wings and picked you up and carried you along.+Verse 12The Lord was the only one who led you; no foreign god was with him.Verse 13The Lord gave you the high country to rule,+and fed you with the crops of the field to eat. He sustained you with honey from the rock and olive oil from the flinty crag,Verse 14with yogurt from the herd and milk from the flock, with the fat of lambs, with rams from Bashan, and goats, along with the best wheat. You drank the wine made from the best grapes.Verse 15But Israel,+you grew fat and rebelled—fat, overweight, and bloated with food. You abandoned the God who made you and despised the Rock of your salvation.Verse 16You made the Lord jealous by worshiping foreign gods; you made him angry with such disgusting practices.Verse 17You offered sacrifices to demons instead of God, to gods you didn't know anything about, to brand-new gods that your forefathers didn't worship.Verse 18You dismissed the Rock who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave birth to you.Verse 19The Lord rejected them when he saw this; his sons and daughters made him angry.Verse 20He said: “I will turn away from them. Then I'll see what happens to them! They are a perverse people, unfaithful children.Verse 21They have made me jealous by worshiping things that are not God; they have made me angry with their useless idols. So I will make them jealous using a people that aren't really a nation; I will make them angry using ignorant foreigners.Verse 22My anger has been set on fire, burning down to the depths of the grave,+destroying the earth and all it produces, even setting fire to the foundations of the mountains.Verse 23I will pile disasters on them; I will use up my arrows shooting at them.Verse 24They will waste away from hunger, destroyed by disease and poisonous plague. I will send wild animals to bite them with their teeth, the fangs of snakes that slide along the ground.Verse 25Outside in the streets the sword kills their children, inside their homes, they die from fright; young men and young women, children and old people.Verse 26I would have told them I was going to cut them to pieces+and wipe out even the memory of them;Verse 27but I didn't want to hear their conquerors jeering, their enemies misunderstanding what had happened and saying, ‘We won all by ourselves, the Lord didn't have anything to do with it.’Verse 28Israel is a nation that doesn't think straight; none of them understand anything.Verse 29How I wish they were wise, so they could understand it; they would recognize what was going to happen to them.Verse 30How on earth could one man chase after a thousand, or two make ten thousand run away, unless their Rock of protection had sold them, unless the Lord had surrendered them?Verse 31The rock they rely on is not like our Rock, as even our enemies admit.+Verse 32But their vine comes from the vine of Sodom, from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous; they are bitter bunches.Verse 33Their wine is the poison of serpents, deadly snake venom.Verse 34I've stored this all up; it's sealed in my vaults.Verse 35I make sure justice is done, I will repay. The time is coming when they will fall, their day of disaster is approaching, their doom will soon arrive.”Verse 36The Lord is going to vindicate his people; he will be merciful to his servants when he sees that they have no strength left, and that everyone is gone, whether slave or free.Verse 37He'll ask, “What happened to your gods, the rock where you went for protection?Verse 38Who ate the fat of your sacrifices and drank the wine of your drink offerings? Have them come and help you; have them come and protect you!Verse 39Listen! I am the only God! There is no other God except me! I bring death, and I give life; I wound, and I heal. No one can be rescued from my power.Verse 40I hold up my hand to heaven and solemnly declare on my eternal life,Verse 41when I sharpen my shining sword and pick it up to execute judgment, I will repay my enemies and punish those who hate me as they deserve.Verse 42My arrows will become drunk with blood, as my sword eats flesh; the blood of those who are killed and captured, the heads of the enemy's leaders.”Verse 43Celebrate with him! Let all God's angels worship him!+Celebrate, foreigners, with his people; because he will pay back those who killed his children.+He will punish his enemies, and repay those who hate him;+he will purify his land and his people.Verse 44Then Moses came with Joshua son of Nun and recited all the words of this song for the people to hear.Verse 45After Moses finished reciting the whole song to all the Israelites,Verse 46he told them, “Think about all these words I've declared to you today, so you can order your children to follow carefully everything in this law.Verse 47Don't treat these words as trivial because they are your life, and by them you will have long lives in the country that you will own after crossing the Jordan.”Verse 48That same day the Lord told Moses,Verse 49“Climb up into the Abarim mountains to Mount Nebo, in the land of Moab opposite Jericho, and look over the country of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites for them to own.Verse 50There on the mountain you've climbed, you will die and join your people in death, in the same way your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and joined his people.Verse 51For there at the waters of Meribah-kadesh in the Desert of Zin, you both were unfaithful to me. You misrepresented me to the Israelites when you didn't treat me as holy in their presence.Verse 52Though you will see the country that I am giving the Israelites from a distance, you won't enter it.”