DEUTERONOMY XXXII deuteronomy 32
Listen oh heavens while I bestow
My words upon the earth below
I teach for all
For speech may fall
As rain on each and all of you
It may distil as does the dew
Or gently rain upon the flowers
Or drench the
grain with showers
And when God's name I state
Bless Him for He is great
And He is ours
If generations crooked and perverse
Corrupt His ways, regard Him not the worse
For His the law
But theirs the flaw
The Rock, He orders all your days
And justice follows all His ways
God without error or deviation
Is He not your foundation?
Your father? Try to be
As just and right as He
O foolish nation
He found you in a howling desert dry
He kept you as the apple of His eye
He saved you there
He gave you care
He led you through the waste alone
What other power availed you? None!
Cov'ring you as with eagle's spreadwings
Hov'ring over fledglings
Stirring from their rest
Bearing from their nest
Above all things
He made you ride upon the choicest soil
Sucking rock for honey, shale for oil
With fat of lambs
And Bashan rams
And goats and kidney-fat of wheat
The harvest of the field to eat
And milk of sheep and curd of kine
On which you used to dine
You filled yourselves with food
And of the grape's rich blood
Drank foaming wine
But thus established you grew fat and broke
Away from God your Saviour Maker Rock
Thick and gross
Kicking and adipose
Scoffing with spirits and abominations
Stirring Him with provocations
Sacrificing up to devils
Novelties arrivals
No-gods, gods unknown
Not even handed down
Imaginations!
Can they not see
What their end will be?
A perverse race
Hidden from My face?
Stirred for their stirring
Provoked for their provoking
My sons My daughters spurned for their provoking
Children with a no-god no-faith full of
vanity
Subject to a no-race nation of insanity
The Rock who bore you, why did you forget?
The God who fathered you, why did you forget?
In My anger fire
shall ignite
And bitter pain and hunger's pangs and
fever's bite
Flames in deepest Sheol fuming
Earth and growth consuming
Very roots of mountains blazing bright
Evils I will heap upon them
And consume My arrows on them
Youth and virgin
Babe and grayling
In terror in their rooms bewailing
Those slain by sword in flight
Or by teeth that rend
Of the beasts that I send
To cause the worms and maggots to delight
O how shall one hunt down a thousand
Or two disperse ten-thousand
Unless their Rock shall sell them
And the Lord deliver them
Into their hand?
If they were wise, this would they comprehend
Their counsels are forgot
Perception have they not
Nor see their end
In this way will
I surely cut them off
In this way will I make their memory sleep
From men, I said:
Yet still did dread
The provocation of the nation's foe
Lest adversaries claimed to know
Lest they should say, our hand is high
And not the Lord has brought this by
Their Rock is not a rock like ours
And judges are their martial powers
Their grapes are bile
Their clusters vile
From Sodom's vine and Gomorrah's fields is their vine
Venom of serpents and cruel asps is their wine
And so the judgments
that at first I thought
Are in my treasure-vaults as yet unwrought
Written and intended
And sealed and suspended
Until their foot shall slip say I
Their day of doom is ever nigh
Of consequences rushing in
Stored with Me at My beckoning
For only to Me
Vengeance shall be
And reckoning
For on His people
judgment shall be wrought
Yet for His servants shall the Lord repent
When He shall see their forces all are spent
And flight and hiding shall avail them
naught
And it is said their gods where are they now
The Rock in whom they trusted when afraid
Who used to drink the wine of their libation
Or ate fat from their sacrificial cow
Let Him rise up, let Him come to your aid
Let Him be your protection
See then that I
- I am he
And there is no god with me
I - I kill and I return to life
I have wounded and I - I heal
And Mine the hand from which none shall appeal
When I have raised My hand to heaven on high
And made My vow: the ever-living I
Though I may whet
the lightning of my sword
And with My hand snatch up in judgment stored
Yet be My arrows drunk with blood
My sword devouring flesh for food
With blood of captives and of slain
From heads of the barbarian
Thus vengeance earned shall be returned
Upon My foes, and upon those
That bear Me hate
I too shall compensate
So praise aloud
His people, every nation
His servants' blood He does avenge
And on His foes returns revenge
And for His people's land makes expiation
Translation: BARRY PRESS
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