The Holy Bible

The Song of Moses

2 My teaching will fall like the rain,
my speech will descend like the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender shoots,
like showers upon the grass.

3 “I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
ascribe greatness to our God! 4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect,
and all His ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong,
righteous and upright is He.

5 “Yet His people have corrupted themselves,
they are children unworthy of Him, defective and blemished,
a perverse and crooked generation. 6 Do you repay the Lord this way,
O foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father and Creator?
Has He not made you and established you?

7 “Remember the days of old,
consider the years of many generations. Ask your father, and He will tell you;
your elders, and they will teach you. 8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the nations
according to the number of the sons of Israel. 9 The Lord’s portion is His people;
Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance.

10 “He found him in a desert land,
in a wasted howling wilderness; He surrounded him, He reared him,
He kept him as the apple of His eye. 11 Like an eagle that stirs up her nest,
and hovers over her young, spreading out her wings, she takes them up,
bearing them on her wings. 12 The Lord alone led him;
there was no foreign god with him.

13 “He made him ride on the heights of the earth,
and fed him from the increase of the fields. He nourished him with honey drawn from the rock,
and oil from the flinty rock; 14 curds from the cattle, and milk from the flocks,
with the fat of the lambs, rams from Bashan, and goats,
with the finest grains of wheat, and you drank wine from the pure blood of the grape.

15 “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked.
you have grown fat, gross, and bloated! Then he forsook God who made him,
and spurned the Rock of his salvation. 16 They provoked His jealousy with strange gods;
with detestable things they provoked Him to anger. 17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God,
to gods they had never known, to new gods recently appeared, which your fathers did not fear. 18 You were unmindful of the Rock who fathered you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth.

19 “When the Lord saw this, He spurned them,
because of the provocation of His sons and daughters. 20 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 there is no faithfulness. 21 They have roused Me to jealousy with their false gods;
they have provoked Me to anger with their vain idols. So I will provoke them to jealousy with an inferior people;
I will make them angry by a foolish nation. 22 For a fire is kindled in My anger,
one that shall burn to the depths of Sheol. It will devour the earth and its increase,
and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

23 ‘I will heap disasters upon them;
I will use up my arrows against them. 24 They will be wasted from hunger,
devoured by pestilence and bitter destruction; I will send the teeth of wild animals against them,
and the venom of serpents that glide through the dust. 25 Outside, the sword will bereave,
and in the chambers there will be terror; it will destroy both the young man and the virgin,
the nursing infant and the gray-haired man.

26 ‘I said I would scatter them,
and blot out the memory of them from among mankind, 27 had I not dreaded the taunts of their enemies,
for their adversaries might misunderstand, and say, “Our hand is triumphant;
it was not the Lord who has done all this” ’.

28 “They are a nation without sense,
neither is there any understanding in them. 29 If only they were wise, they would understand this;
they would discern what their end will be. 30 How could one man chase a thousand,
and two men put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them,
and the Lord had given them up? 31 For their rock is not like our Rock;
even our enemies concede this. 32 For their vine is from the vine of Sodom
and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison,
their clutters are bitter; 33 their wine is the venom of serpents,
the deadly poison of cobras.

34 ‘Is not this laid up in store with Me,
sealed up in My treasuries? 35 Vengeance is Mine, and retribution;
their foot will slip in due time, for the day of their calamity is at hand,
and their doom is hastening upon them’.

36 “For the Lord will judge His people,
and have compassion on His servants, when He sees their power is gone,
and no one is left, slave or free. 37 He will say ‘Where are their gods,
the gods they took refuge in? 38 Who ate the fat of their sacrifices,
and drank the wine of their drink offerings?

39 ‘See now that I, even I, am He!
There is no god besides Me. I bring death and I give life;
I wound and I heal; and there is no one who can deliver from My hand. 40 For I raise My hand to heaven,
and declare, “As I live forever, 41 when I sharpen My flashing sword,
and My hand takes hold in judgment, I will render vengeance on My adversaries,
and I will repay those who hate Me. 42 I will make My arrows drunk with blood,
and My sword will devour flesh, with the blood of the slain and the captives,
the heads of the enemy leaders” ’.

43 “Rejoice, O nations, with His people,
for He will avenge the blood of His servants. He will take vengeance on His adversaries,
and make atonement for His land and His people.”