Deuteronomy 32:1-27

Listen, Heavens, I have something to tell you. Attention, Earth, I’ve got a mouth full of words. My teaching, let it fall like a gentle rain, my words arrive like morning dew, Like a sprinkling rain on new grass, like spring showers on the garden. For it’s GOD’s Name I’m preaching— respond to the greatness of our God! The Rock: His works are perfect, and the way he works is fair and just; A God you can depend upon, no exceptions, a straight-arrow God. His messed-up, mixed-up children, his non-children, throw mud at him but none of it sticks. Don’t you realize it is GOD you are treating like this? This is crazy; don’t you have any sense of reverence? Isn’t this your father who created you, who made you and gave you a place on Earth? Read up on what happened before you were born; dig into the past, understand your roots. Ask your parents what it was like before you were born; ask the old-ones, they’ll tell you a thing or two. When the High God gave the nations their stake, gave them their place on Earth, He put each of the peoples within boundaries under the care of divine guardians. But GOD himself took charge of his people, took Jacob on as his personal concern. He found him out in the wilderness, in an empty, windswept wasteland. He threw his arms around him, lavished attention on him, guarding him as the apple of his eye. He was like an eagle hovering over its nest, overshadowing its young, Then spreading its wings, lifting them into the air, teaching them to fly. GOD alone led him; there was not a foreign god in sight. GOD lifted him onto the hilltops, so he could feast on the crops in the fields. He fed him honey from the rock, oil from granite crags, Curds of cattle and the milk of sheep, the choice cuts of lambs and goats, Fine Bashan rams, high-quality wheat, and the blood of grapes: you drank good wine! Jeshurun put on weight and bucked; you got fat, became obese, a tub of lard. He abandoned the God who made him, he mocked the Rock of his salvation. They made him jealous with their foreign trendy gods, and with obscenities they vexed him no end. They sacrificed to no-god demons, gods they knew nothing about, The latest in gods, fresh from the market, gods your ancestors would never call “gods.” You walked out on the Rock who gave you your life, forgot the birth-God who brought you into the world. GOD saw it and spun around, angered and hurt by his sons and daughters. He said, “From now on I’m looking the other way. Wait and see what happens to them. Oh, they’re a turned-around, upside-down generation! Who knows what they’ll do from one moment to the next? They’ve goaded me with their no-gods, infuriated me with their hot-air gods; I’m going to goad them with a no-people, with a hollow nation incense them. My anger started a fire, a wildfire burning deep down in Sheol, Then shooting up and devouring the Earth and its crops, setting all the mountains, from bottom to top, on fire. I’ll pile catastrophes on them, I’ll shoot my arrows at them: Starvation, blistering heat, killing disease; I’ll send snarling wild animals to attack from the forest and venomous creatures to strike from the dust. Killing in the streets, terror in the houses, Young men and virgins alike struck down, and yes, breast-feeding babies and gray-haired old men.” I could have said, “I’ll hack them to pieces, wipe out all trace of them from the Earth,” Except that I feared the enemy would grab the chance to take credit for all of it, Crowing, “Look what we did! GOD had nothing to do with this.”