1Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak. And hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. 2My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall drop down as the dew, as the small rain on the tender plant, and as the showers on the grass; 3because I will proclaim the name of Jehovah and ascribe greatness to our God. 4 He is the Rock; His work is perfect. For all His ways are just, a God of faithfulness, and without evil; just and upright is He. 5They have corrupted themselves; they are not His sons; it is their blemish; they are a crooked and perverse generation. 6Do you thus give back to Jehovah, O foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father who bought you? Has not He made you and established you? 7Remember the ancient days, consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will declare to you, your elders, and they shall say to you; 8when the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance; when He separated the sons of Adam, He set up the bounds of the peoples, according to the number of the sons of Israel. 9For Jehovah's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance. 10He found him in a desert land, and in the waste, a howling wilderness. He encircled him and cared for him; He guarded him as the pupil of His eye. 11As the eagle stirs up its nest; it hovers over its young; it spreads out its wings and takes it, and bears it on its wing. 12Jehovah alone led him, and there was no strange god with him. 13He made him ride on the high places of the earth, so that he might eat the increase of the fields. And He made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; 14butter from cows, and milk from the flock, with fat from lambs, and rams of the sons of Bashan, and he goats, with the fat of the kidneys of wheat, and of the blood of the grape you shall drink wine. 15But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, thick and sated. And he abandoned God who made him, and fell away from the Rock of his salvation. 16With strange gods they moved Him to jealousy; and with idols they provoked Him to anger. 17They sacrificed to demons who were not God, to gods whom they did not know, new ones who came lately. Your fathers had not dreaded them. 18You forgot the Rock that brought you into being and ceased to care for God who formed you. 19And Jehovah looked and despised them because of the provocation of His sons and of His daughters. 20And He said, I will hide My face from them; I will see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, sons in whom is no faithfulness. 21They made Me jealous with a not-a-god; they made Me angry by their vanities; and I shall make them jealous by a not-a-people; by a foolish nation I shall make them angry. 22For a fire has been kindled in My anger, and it burns to the lowest Sheol, and consumes the earth and its produce; and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. 23I will heap evils on them; I will use up My arrows on them. 24I will send on them exhaustion by famine, and depletion by burning heat, and bitter destruction, and the teeth of beasts, with the venom of crawling things of the dust. 25The sword shall bereave from without, and terror from within, both the young man and the virgin, the suckling with the man of gray hairs. 26I said, I will dash them to pieces; I will make their memory cease from among men; 27 saying, Were it not the provocation of an enemy I feared, that their foes should judge amiss, that they might not say, Our hand is high, and Jehovah has not done all this. 28For they are a nation void of counsel, and no understanding is in them. 29If they were wise, they would understand this; they would consider their latter end. 30How could one chase a thousand, and two put a myriad to flight, if it were not their Rock that sold them, and Jehovah had shut them up? 31For their rock is not our Rock, even our enemies being judges. 32For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and their grapes of the fields of Gomorrah, grapes of gall; they have bitter clusters. 33Their wine is the venom of serpents, and the cruel venom of asps. 34 Is it not stored up with Me, sealed in My treasuries? 35Vengeance and retribution belong to Me; in due time their foot will slip; for the day of their calamity is near, and the things prepared are hurrying for them. 36For Jehovah will bring His people justice; and He shall have compassion on His servants, for He sees that their power is gone, and only the imprisoned and abandoned remain. 37And He will say, Where are their gods, the rock in which they sought refuge? 38Who ate the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you; let it be a hiding place for you. 39See now that I, I am He, and there is no other God with Me. I kill, and I keep alive. I wound and I heal, and there is no deliverer from My hand. 40For I lift up My hand to the heavens and say, I live forever! 41If I have sharpened My glittering sword, and My hand lays hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to My foes, and I will repay those who hate Me. 42I will make My arrows drunk with blood, and My sword shall devour flesh, with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the hairy head of the enemy. 43Rejoice, O nations, of His people; for He shall avenge the blood of His servants, and shall render vengeance to His foes, and shall have mercy on His land and His people. 44And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun. 45And Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel, 46and said to them, Set your heart on all the words which I have testified against you today, that you command your sons to take heed to do all the Words of this Law. 47For it is not a useless Word for you, for it is your life, and by this Word you shall prolong your days in the land where you are crossing over the Jordan, there to possess it. 48And Jehovah spoke to Moses in that same day, saying, 49Go up into this Mount Abarim, to Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, which is opposite Jericho; and see the land of Canaan which I am giving to the sons of Israel for a possession; 50and die in the mountain where you are going, and be gathered to your people, even as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor, and was gathered to his people; 51because you transgressed toward Me among the sons of Israel at the Waters of Strife in Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you did not sanctify Me in the midst of the sons of Israel. 52Yet you shall see the land across from you, but you shall not go in there to the land which I am giving to the sons of Israel.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 1 MOSES' SONG, WHICH SETS FORTH THE PERFECTIONS OF GOD. (Deu. 32:1-43)
Give ear, O ye heavens; . . . hear, O earth--The magnificence of the exordium, the grandeur of the theme, the frequent and sudden transitions, the elevated strain of the sentiments and language, entitle this song to be ranked amongst the noblest specimens of poetry to be found in the Scriptures.
2 My doctrine shall drop, &c.--The language may justly be taken as uttered in the form of a wish or prayer, and the comparison of wholesome instruction to the pure, gentle, and insinuating influence of rain or dew, is frequently made by the sacred writers (
Isa 5:6;
Isa 55:10-
Isa 55:11).
4 He is the Rock--a word expressive of power and stability. The application of it in this passage is to declare that God had been true to His covenant with their fathers and them. Nothing that He had promised had failed; so that if their national experience had been painfully checkered by severe and protracted trials, notwithstanding the brightest promises, that result was traceable to their own undutiful and perverse conduct; not to any vacillation or unfaithfulness on the part of God (
Jas 1:17), whose procedure was marked by justice and judgment, whether they had been exalted to prosperity or plunged into the depths of affliction.
5 They have corrupted themselves--that is, the Israelites by their frequent lapses and their inveterate attachment to idolatry.
their spot is not the spot of his children--This is an allusion to the marks which idolaters inscribe on their foreheads or their arms with paint or other substances, in various colors and forms--straight, oval, or circular, according to the favorite idol of their worship.
6 is not he thy father that hath bought thee--or emancipated thee from Egyptian bondage.
and made thee--advanced the nation to unprecedented and peculiar privileges.
8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance--In the division of the earth, which Noah is believed to have made by divine direction (
Gen 10:5;
Deut 2:5-
Deut 2:9;
Acts 17:26-
Acts 17:27), Palestine was reserved by the wisdom and goodness of Heaven for the possession of His peculiar people and the display of the most stupendous wonders. The theater was small, but admirably suited for the convenient observation of the human race--at the junction of the two great continents of Asia and Africa, and almost within sight of Europe. From this spot as from a common center the report of God's wonderful works, the glad tidings of salvation through the obedience and sufferings of His own eternal Son, might be rapidly and easily wafted to every part of the globe.
he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel--Another rendering, which has received the sanction of eminent scholars, has been proposed as follows: "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam and set the bounds of every people, the children of Israel were few in numbers, when the Lord chose that people and made Jacob His inheritance" (compare
Deut 30:5;
Gen 34:30;
Ps 105:9-
Ps 105:12).
10 found him in a desert land--took him into a covenant relation at Sinai, or rather "sustained," "provided for him" in a desert land.
a waste howling wilderness--a common Oriental expression for a desert infested by wild beasts.
11 As an eagle . . . fluttereth over her young--This beautiful and expressive metaphor is founded on the extraordinary care and attachment which the female eagle cherishes for her young. When her newly fledged progeny are sufficiently advanced to soar in their native element, she, in their first attempts at flying, supports them on the tip of her wing, encouraging, directing, and aiding their feeble efforts to longer and sublimer flights. So did God take the most tender and powerful care of His chosen people; He carried them out of Egypt and led them through all the horrors of the wilderness to the promised inheritance.
13 He made him ride on the high places, &c.--All these expressions seem to have peculiar reference to their home in the trans-jordanic territory, that being the extent of Palestine that they had seen at the time when Moses is represented as uttering these words. "The high places" and "the fields" are specially applicable to the tablelands of Gilead as are the allusions to the herds and flocks, the honey of the wild bees which hive in the crevices of the rocks, the oil from the olive as it grew singly or in small clumps on the tops of hills where scarcely anything else would grow, the finest wheat (
Ps 81:16;
Ps 147:14), and the prolific vintage.
15 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked--This is a poetical name for Israel. The metaphor here used is derived from a pampered animal, which, instead of being tame and gentle, becomes mischievous and vicious, in consequence of good living and kind treatment. So did the Israelites conduct themselves by their various acts of rebellion, murmuring, and idolatrous apostasy.
17 They sacrificed unto devils--(See on
Lev 17:7).
21 those which are not a people--that is, not favored with such great and peculiar privileges as the Israelites (or, rather poor, despised heathens). The language points to the future calling of the Gentiles.
23 I will spend mine arrows upon them--War, famine, pestilence (
Ps 77:17) are called in Scripture the arrows of the Almighty.
29 Oh, . . . that they would consider their latter end--The terrible judgments, which, in the event of their continued and incorrigible disobedience, would impart so awful a character to the close of their national history.
32 vine of Sodom . . . grapes of gall--This fruit, which the Arabs call "Lot's Sea Orange," is of a bright yellow color and grows in clusters of three or four. When mellow, it is tempting in appearance, but on being struck, explodes like a puffball, consisting of skin and fiber only.
44 Moses . . . spake all the words of this song in the ears, &c.--It has been beautifully styled "the Song of the Dying Swan" [LOWTH]. It was designed to be a national anthem, which it should be the duty and care of magistrates to make well known by frequent repetition, to animate the people to right sentiments towards a steadfast adherence to His service.
48 Get thee up . . . and die . . . Because ye trespassed . . . at Meribah--(See on
Num 20:13).
52 thou shalt see the land, but thou shalt not go thither-- (
Num 27:12). Notwithstanding so severe a disappointment, not a murmur of complaint escapes his lips. He is not only resigned but acquiescing; and in the near prospect of his death, he pours forth the feelings of his devout heart in sublime strains and eloquent blessings.