Deuteronomy 31:30-32:47--The Song of Moses

Deuteronomy 31:30-32:47
English Standard Version

The Song of Moses
30 Then Moses spoke the words of this song until they were finished, in the ears of all the assembly of Israel:

32 “Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak,
    and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
2 May my teaching drop as the rain,
    my speech distill as the dew,
like gentle rain upon the tender grass,
    and like showers upon the herb.
3 For I will proclaim the name of the LORD;
    ascribe greatness to our God!

4 “The Rock, his work is perfect,
    for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
    just and upright is he.
5 They have dealt corruptly with him;
    they are no longer his children because they are blemished;
    they are a crooked and twisted generation.
6 Do you thus repay the LORD,
    you foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your father, who created you,
    who made you and established you?
7 Remember the days of old;
    consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
    your elders, and they will tell you.
8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the LORD's portion is his people,
    Jacob his allotted heritage.

10 “He found him in a desert land,
    and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
    he kept him as the apple of his eye.
11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
    that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
    bearing them on its pinions,
12 the LORD alone guided him,
    no foreign god was with him.
13 He made him ride on the high places of the land,
    and he ate the produce of the field,
and he suckled him with honey out of the rock,
    and oil out of the flinty rock.
14 Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,
    with fat of lambs,
rams of Bashan and goats,
    with the very finest of the wheat--
    and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape.

15 “But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked;
    you grew fat, stout, and sleek;
then he forsook God who made him
    and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.
16 They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods;
    with abominations they provoked him to anger.
17 They sacrificed to demons that were no gods,
    to gods they had never known,
to new gods that had come recently,
    whom your fathers had never dreaded.
18 You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you,
    and you forgot the God who gave you birth.

19 “The LORD saw it and spurned them,
    because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.
20 And 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 is no faithfulness.
21 They have made me jealous with what is no god;
    they have provoked me to anger with their idols.
So I will make them jealous with those who are no people;
    I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
22 For a fire is kindled by my anger,
    and it burns to the depths of Sheol,
devours the earth and its increase,
    and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

23 “‘And I will heap disasters upon them;
    I will spend my arrows on them;
24 they shall be wasted with hunger,
    and devoured by plague
    and poisonous pestilence;
I will send the teeth of beasts against them,
    with the venom of things that crawl in the dust.
25 Outdoors the sword shall bereave,
    and indoors terror,
for young man and woman alike,
    the nursing child with the man of gray hairs.
26 I would have said, “I will cut them to pieces;
    I will wipe them from human memory,”
27 had I not feared provocation by the enemy,
    lest their adversaries should misunderstand,
lest they should say, “Our hand is triumphant,
    it was not the LORD who did all this.”’

28 “For they are a nation void of counsel,
    and there is no understanding in them.
29 If they were wise, they would understand this;
    they would discern their latter end!
30 How could one have chased a thousand,
    and two have put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
    and the LORD had given them up?
31 For their rock is not as our Rock;
    our enemies are by themselves.
32 For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom
    and from the fields of Gomorrah;
their grapes are grapes of poison;
    their clusters are bitter;
33 their wine is the poison of serpents
    and the cruel venom of asps.

34 “‘Is not this laid up in store with me,
    sealed up in my treasuries?
35 Vengeance is mine, and recompense,
    for the time when their foot shall slip;
for the day of their calamity is at hand,
    and their doom comes swiftly.’
36 For the LORD will vindicate his people
    and have compassion on his servants,
when he sees that their power is gone
    and there is none remaining, bond or free.
37 Then he will say, ‘Where are their gods,
    the rock in which they took refuge,
38 who ate the fat of their sacrifices
    and drank the wine of their drink offering?
Let them rise up and help you;
    let them be your protection!

39 “‘See now that I, even I, am he,
    and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive;
    I wound and I heal;
    and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
40 For I lift up my hand to heaven
    and swear, As I live forever,
41 if I sharpen my flashing sword
    and my hand takes hold on judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries
    and will repay those who hate me.
42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood,
    and my sword shall devour flesh--
with the blood of the slain and the captives,
    from the long-haired heads of the enemy.’

43 “Rejoice with him, O heavens;
    bow down to him, all gods,
for he avenges the blood of his children
    and takes vengeance on his adversaries.
He repays those who hate him
    and cleanses his people's land.”
​
44 Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun. 45 And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, 46 he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. 47 For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”

It sounds as if Jesus may have even given the words to Moses to sing because the song talks in first-person from the point of view of the One who is responsible to bear the sword in the LORD's kingdom, and we know that is Jesus.  We will see the full extent of this judgment play out in the end times in the book of Revelation, and we know that in the end the LORD and all His army of heaven win hands down--of the Lord's enemies are defeated before Him by the sword that comes from His mouth.

There is then a call to worship as the people are supposed to respond by worshiping their Creator and Sustainer.  The whole world is supposed to know who He is and chose to worship Him.  Those that chose not to do so now, will be compelled to do so at the time of their judgment.

Moses taught this song to all the people in the presence of Joshua and warned them to take heart and hear the warnings within it, so that they may understand that the LORD is commanding them to be careful to obey the whole Law so that He can bless them and not have to curse them; so that they can be His friends and not His enemies.  This is a matter of life and death to them and their whole purpose and existence as the people of the LORD is wrapped up in their obedience to the Law.  Their destiny as they know face a true "watershed" moment at the Jorden River will be determined by if they continue to walk in obedience, or if they attempt to become just like the Canaanites that the LORD is sending them into the Land to destroy--what makes the people think that the LORD will not also send others into their land to destroy those who are unfaithful?

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This is quite a long passage today, but this is the song that the LORD told Moses to write and share with the people before his death that the LORD would help the people to remember and it would stand as a witness against them when they violated the Law and broke the covenant and the blessing of the LORD was removed and the curses of the Law came upon them.

Moses asks for the people to soak up the words of this song as the ground soaks up a gentile rain and that it would give refreshment and help promote growth and life.

Throughout this song, the LORD is called The Rock.  He is a sure and steady foundation that the people must build upon individually and corporately.  His ways are perfect and just.  He is faithful and in all ways without sin.  All of His judgments and actions are righteous.

Those who have broken faith and covenant with Him to choose their sin and rebellion over the LORD are no longer worthy to be called His children, for they are no longer made in His likeness and bearing His image.  They are blemished, but He is holy and perfect in both His nature and His actions.  Those that rebel against the LORD, even if they belong to the family of Abraham, are part of a crooked and twisted generation, and the LORD calls such people foolish and senseless.

Since He is our Father who created all of us, He alone is worthy of all glory and honor and praise and will not share it with any other.  He alone is worthy of our worship.  This is the way it has always been and since the LORD set the boundaries for each nation, He alone is able to take away that authority and the blessing of the land and give such authority and land to others either temporarily or permanently (however, we know He has made an everlasting covenant with Israel to never completely destroy them and that they will eventually return to the Promised Land once they repent and believe.

The LORD chose Israel who was not a people to be His chosen people.  He has revealed Himself to them and led them these 40 years through the wilderness, giving them special provision and special revelation.    He has kept them safe from their enemies and has given them food to eat and a good, rich land, "flowing with milk and honey" that they did not work to cultivate as their own, along with anything fruitful that the Land produced.

The LORD knows that the people will get comfortable and complacent with the blessings that He would pour out on them and would turn away to false gods, even though those gods and idols had done nothing for them and could do nothing for them.  The people would willfully choose to abandon the LORD as their God because they would want to be like all the other nations in the way they worshiped and in their morality and culture.

This will provoke the LORD to jealousy, for He is a God whose name is Jealous, and His fiery judgment will be poured out on those that He calls His own in a spirit of correction.  He will send disasters and plagues not unlike those He sent on Egypt so that the people might see that they are not being any different than the Egyptians were, but they will not see this.  God will have to eventually take them away from the Land before they realize how bad they have messed up.

The nation of Israel will try to claim credit for their military victories that they only won because of the LORD's help, and the LORD says they will be a nation that is void of counsel and in which there is no understanding among them--part of this is that there is no wisdom apart from God and I think another reason for this is that the LORD can and will give them over, eventually, to a depraved mind like we see in Romans 1.

The people will look more like Sodom and Gomorrah than like people of the kingdom of heaven.  They will be their own enemies and will become the enemies of the LORD, though they will still try to call themselves by His name.  Their identity is rooted in sin and rebellion against everything the LORD is and stands for, and antithetical to what He is trying to do in them and through them.

The LORD is storing up His wrath and vengeance for the great and terrible Day of the LORD in which judgment will be poured out on all the enemies of the LORD.  The LORD indicates that even some of "His people" will be caught up in this judgment as they are storing up wrath, not blessings, for themselves.  The day of calamity and judgment will be swift and sure for both the people of God and all those who make enemies with them.  In the end though, for the sake of the covenant He made with Abraham, He will continue to love the people and will change their hearts and vindicate them  They will bring sacrifices to Him in repentance to ask for peace and forgiveness, and their sacrifices will be accepted.  Once this happens and the people return to the LORD, the LORD will make it known to the people and the nations that He once again hold Israel in a place of special favor, not because of anything they could do to earn His love, but simply because He has chosen to love them (even when they were at their worst).