Deuteronomy 32 · Parashat Haazinu

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.

My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass:

because I will call on the name of the Lord: ascribe greatness to our God.

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are justice: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

Not his the corruption, but the blemish of his sons: they are a perverse and crooked generation.

Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that bought thee? has he not made thee, and established thee?

Remember the days of old consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will recount it to thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.

When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Yisra᾽el.

For the Lord’s portion is his people; Ya῾aqov is the lot of his inheritance.

He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

As an eagle stirs up her nest, broods over her young, spreads abroad her wings takes them, bears them on her pinions:

so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.

He made him ride on the high places of the earth, and he ate the produce of the fields; and he made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;

butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink wine of the pure blood of the grape.

But Yeshurun grew fat, and kicked: thou art grown fat, thou art become thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations they provoked him to anger.

They sacrificed to powerless spirits; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.

Of the Rock that begot thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.

And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provocation of his sons, and of his daughters.

And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very perverse generation, children in whom is no faith.

They have moved me to jealousy with a no god; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with a no people; I will provoke them to anger with a vile nation.

For a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn to the nethermost parts of the earth, and shall consume the earth with its produce, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend my arrows on them.

They shall be sucked empty by hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of crawling things of the dust.

The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of grey hairs.

I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men:

were it not for the heaped up wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should misdeem, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the Lord has not done all this.

For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.

O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!

How should one man chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up?

For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.

For their vine is of the vine of Sedom, and of the fields of ῾Amora: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:

their wine is the fierceness of crocodiles, and the cruel venom of asps.

Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?

To me belongs vengeance, and recompense, when their foot slides: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.

And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted,

those that did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.

For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.

If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to my enemies, and will reward those who hate me.

I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; with the blood of the slain and of the captives; with the head of the wild bands of the enemy.

Rejoice, O nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries and will forgive his land, and his people.

And Moshe came and spoke all the words of this poem in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun.

And Moshe made an end of speaking all these words to all Yisra᾽el:

and he said to them, Set your hearts to all the words which I testify among you this day, which you shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this Tora.

For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and through this word you shall prolong your days in the land, into which you go over the Yarden to possess it.

And the Lord spoke to Moshe that same day, saying,

Go up into this mount ῾Avarim, to mount Nevo, which is in the land of Mo᾽av, that is facing Yereĥo; and behold the land of Kena῾an, which I give to the children of Yisra᾽el for a possession:

and die in the mount into which thou goest up, and be gathered to thy people; as Aharon thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered to his people:

because you transgressed against me among the children of Yisra᾽el at the waters of Merivat-qadesh, in the wilderness of Żin; because you sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Yisra᾽el.

Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go there into the land which I give to the children of Yisra᾽el.