1 "Listen, you heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, what my mouth declares.
2 May my teaching drip down like the rain, my speech distill like the dew, like fine rain on tender grass, like showers on the green plants.
3 For I will proclaim the name of the LORD. Give greatness to our God!
4 The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without wrong, righteous and upright is he.
5 They have dealt corruptly with him; by their defect they are not his children, a perverse and crooked generation.
6 Is this the way you repay the LORD, you foolish and senseless people? Is he not your Father, who bought you, who made you and set you firm?
7 Remember the days of old; consider the years of generation after generation. Ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.
8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of man, he set the borders of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.
9 For the LORD's share is his people; Jacob is the allotment of his inheritance.
10 He found him in a desert land, in a barren, howling wilderness. He encircled him and watched over him; he kept him like the apple of his eye.
11 As an eagle rouses its nest and flutters over its young, he spread his wings, caught him up, and bore him on his pinions.
12 The LORD alone guided him; no foreign god was with him.
13 He set him riding over the heights of the earth, and he ate the yield of the fields. He let him suck honey from the crag and oil from the hard rock,
14 butter from the herd and milk from the flock, with the fat of lambs and rams, the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the choicest kernels of wheat; and you drank the blood of the grape, foaming wine.
15 But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. You became fat, bloated, and sleek! He abandoned the God who made him and treated the Rock of his salvation with contempt.
16 They roused his jealousy with foreign gods and angered him with abominations.
17 They sacrificed to demons that were not God, to gods they had never known, newcomers lately arrived, whom your fathers never feared.
18 You ignored the Rock who begot you; you forgot the God who brought you forth.
19 The LORD saw and rejected them, provoked by his sons and daughters.
20 He said, 'I will hide my face from them and see what their end will be, for they are a twisted generation, children who cannot be trusted.
21 They made me jealous with what is not a god; they angered me with their worthless idols. So I will make them jealous with what is not a people; with a nation of fools I will anger them.
22 For fire has flared up in my anger and burns to the lowest depths of Sheol. It consumes the earth and its harvest and sets ablaze the foundations of the mountains.
23 I will pile disasters on them and use up my arrows against them.
24 They will waste away with hunger, consumed by burning fever and bitter pestilence. I will send against them the fangs of beasts and the venom of creatures that glide in the dust.
25 Outdoors the sword will take their children, and in the inner rooms terror will strike, young man and young woman alike, the infant at the breast and the gray-haired man.
26 I would have said, "I will scatter them; I will erase the memory of them from mankind,"
27 but I feared the taunts of the enemy, that their foes would misread it and say, "Our hand has prevailed; the LORD did none of this."'
28 For they are a nation lacking in counsel, and there is no discernment in them.
29 If they were wise, they would grasp this and perceive what their end will be.
30 How could one man pursue a thousand, or two make ten thousand flee, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had handed them over?
31 For their rock is not as our Rock, as even our enemies concede.
32 Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the terraces of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous grapes, and their clusters are bitter.
33 Their wine is the venom of serpents, the deadly poison of cobras.
34 'Is this not stored up with me, sealed in my storehouses?
35 Vengeance is mine, and repayment, in the time when their foot slips; for the day of their disaster is at hand, and their doom comes rushing on.'
36 For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone and no one remains, slave or free.
37 He will say, 'Where now are their gods, the rock in which they sought refuge,
38 the gods who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them get up and help you; let them be a shelter over you!
39 See now that I, I am he, and there is no god beside me. I put to death and I bring to life; I have wounded and I will heal, and there is no one who can deliver from my hand.
40 For I raise my hand to heaven and declare: As surely as I live forever,
41 when I whet my flashing sword and my hand grasps judgment, I will pay back vengeance to my foes and 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 the captives, from the long-haired heads of the enemy.'
43 Shout for joy, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will pay back vengeance to his foes and make atonement for his land, for his people."
44 Moses came with Hoshea son of Nun and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people.
45 When Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel,
46 he told them, "Take to heart all the words I solemnly declare to you today, so that you may command your children to carefully observe all the words of this law.
47 This is no trivial matter for you; it is your very life. By this word you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess."
48 On that same day the LORD said to Moses,
49 "Climb this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, across from Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving the children of Israel as their possession.
50 Then die on the mountain you have climbed and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people.
51 For you both were unfaithful to me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, because you did not uphold my holiness among the children of Israel.
52 You will view the land from a distance, but you will not go into it, the land I am giving to the children of Israel."