1 GIVE EAR, O heavens, and I [Moses] will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. 2 My message shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the light rain upon the tender grass, and as the showers upon the herb. 3 For I will proclaim the name [and presence] of the Lord. Concede and ascribe greatness to our God.
4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are law and justice. A God of faithfulness without breach or deviation, just and right is He. 5 They [Israel] have spoiled themselves. They are not sons to Him, and that is their blemish--a perverse and crooked generation! 6 Do you thus repay the Lord, you foolish and senseless people? Is not He your Father Who acquired you for His own, Who made and established you [as a nation]? 7 Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations. Ask your father and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you. 8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of men, He set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the Israelites. 9 For the Lord's portion is His people; Jacob (Israel) is the lot of His inheritance.
10 He found him in a desert land, in the howling void of the wilderness; He kept circling around him, He scanned him [penetratingly], He kept him as the pupil of His eye. 11 As an eagle that stirs up her nest, that flutters over her young, He spread abroad His wings and He took them, He bore them on His pinions. 12 So the Lord alone led him; there was no foreign god with Him. 13 He made Israel ride on the high places of the earth, and he ate the increase of the field; and He made him suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock, 14 Butter and curds of the herd and milk of the flock, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and he-goats, with the finest of the wheat; and you drank wine of the blood of the grape.
15 But Jeshurun (Israel) grew fat and kicked. You became fat, you grew thick, you were gorged and sleek! Then he forsook God Who made him and forsook and despised the Rock of his salvation. 16 They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations they provoked Him to anger. 17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God--to gods whom they knew not, to new gods lately come up, whom your fathers never knew or feared. 18 Of the Rock Who bore you you were unmindful; you forgot the God Who travailed in your birth.
19 And the Lord saw it and He spurned and rejected them, out of indignation with His sons and 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 perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness. 21 They have moved Me to jealousy with what is not God; they have angered Me with their idols. So I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people; I will anger them with a foolish nation. 22 For a fire is kindled by My anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth with its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.
23 And I will heap evils upon them; I will spend My arrows upon them. 24 They shall be wasted with hunger and devoured with burning heat and poisonous pestilence; and the teeth of beasts will I send against them, with the poison of crawling things of the dust. 25 From without the sword shall bereave, and in the chambers shall be terror, destroying both young man and virgin, the sucking child with the man of gray hairs. 26 I said, I would scatter them afar and I would have made the remembrance of them to cease from among men, 27 Had I not feared the provocation of the foe, lest their enemies misconstrue it and lest they should say, Our own hand has prevailed; all this was not the work of the Lord.
28 For they are a nation void of counsel, and there is no understanding in them. 29 O that they were wise and would see through this [present triumph] to their ultimate fate! 30 How could one have chased a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had delivered them up? 31 For their rock is not like our Rock, even our enemies themselves judge this. 32 For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of [poisonous] gall, their clusters are bitter. 33 Their wine is the [furious] venom of serpents, and the pitiless poison of vipers.
34 Is not this laid up in store with Me, sealed up in My treasuries? 35 Vengeance is Mine, and recompense, in the time when their foot shall slide; for the day of their disaster is at hand and their doom comes speedily. 36 For the Lord will revoke sentence for His people and relent for His servants' sake when He sees that their power is gone and none remains, whether bond or free. 37 And He will say, Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge, 38 Who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offering? Let them rise up and help you, let them be your protection!
39 See now that I, I am He, and there is no god beside Me; I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, and there is none who can deliver out of My hand. 40 For I lift up My hand to heaven and swear, As I live forever, 41 If I whet My lightning sword and My hand takes hold on judgment, I will wreak vengeance on My foes and recompense those who hate Me. 42 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 heads of the foe.
43 Rejoice [with] His people, O you nations, for He avenges the blood of His servants, and vengeance He inflicts on His foes and clears guilt from the land of His people.
44 And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he and Hoshea (Joshua) son of Nun. 45 And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, 46 He said to them, Set your [minds and] hearts on all the words which I command you this day, that you may command them to your children, that they may be watchful to do all the words of this law. 47 For it is not an empty and worthless trifle for you; it is your [very] life. By it you shall live long in the land which you are going over the Jordan to possess.
48 And the Lord said to Moses that same day, 49 Get up into this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho, and look at the land of Canaan which I give to the Israelites for a possession. 50 And die on the mountain which you ascend and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people, 51 Because you broke faith with Me in the midst of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah-kadesh in the Wilderness of Zin and because you did not set Me apart as holy in the midst of the Israelites. 52 For you shall see the land opposite you at a distance, but you shall not go there, into the land which I give the Israelites.