Deuteronomy 32: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses recites the song God told him to teach Israel. It calls heaven and earth to listen, praises the LORD as the Rock whose ways are just, and recalls how he found Israel in the desert and cared for them. It then charges that Israel grew fat, abandoned God, and sacrificed to other gods, and it lays out the disasters God will send, holding back from scattering them and blotting out their memory only so enemies will not claim credit; in the end God declares that vengeance is his, that he alone kills and makes alive, and that he will avenge his servants' blood. Moses then urges the people to take the words to heart, and the LORD tells him to climb Mount Nebo, look at Canaan, and die there.

Claim by Claim

1. 32:1
   • The speaker calls on the heavens to give ear.
   • The speaker says he will speak.
   • The speaker calls on the earth to hear the words of his mouth.
2. 32:2
   • The speaker's teaching will fall like rain.
   • The speaker's speech will drip like dew.
   • The speaker's words are like fine rain on new grass.
   • The speaker's words are like showers on plants.
3. 32:3
   • The speaker will proclaim the name of the LORD.
   • The speaker calls on the hearers to ascribe greatness to our God.
4. 32:4
   • He is the Rock.
   • His work is perfect.
   • All his ways are justice.
   • He is a God of faithfulness.
   • There is no injustice in him.
   • He is righteous and upright.
5. 32:5
   • Corruption has been done toward him.
   • The blemish is not that of his children.
   • The Hebrew of this clause is unclear as to who acted corruptly and whose the blemish is.
   • They are a perverse and crooked generation.
6. 32:6
   • The speaker asks whether they repay the LORD in this way.
   • The speaker calls the people foolish and not wise.
   • The speaker asks whether he is not your father who acquired you.
   • The speaker asks whether he did not make you.
   • The speaker asks whether he did not establish you.
7. 32:7
   • The hearers are told to remember the days of long ago.
   • The hearers are told to consider the years of generation after generation.
   • The hearers are told to ask their father, and he will tell them.
   • The hearers are told to ask their elders, and they will tell them.
8. 32:8
   • The Most High gave the nations their inheritance.
   • The Most High separated the sons of man.
   • He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.
9. 32:9
   • The LORD's portion is his people.
   • Jacob is the measured share of his inheritance.
10. 32:10
    • He found him in a desert land.
    • He found him in an empty, howling wasteland.
    • He encircled him.
    • He gave him understanding.
    • He guarded him like the pupil of his eye.
11. 32:11
    • An eagle stirs up its nest.
    • An eagle hovers over its young.
    • He spreads out his wings.
    • He takes him.
    • He carries him on his pinions.
12. 32:12
    • The LORD alone led him.
    • No foreign god was with him.
13. 32:13
    • He made him ride on the high places of the land.
    • He ate the produce of the field.
    • He made him suck honey out of the rock.
    • He made him suck oil out of the flinty rock.
14. 32:14
    • He was given curds of the herd.
    • He was given milk of the flock.
    • He was given fat of lambs.
    • He was given rams of the breed of Bashan.
    • He was given goats.
    • He was given the finest of wheat.
    • You drank wine from the blood of the grape.
15. 32:15
    • Jeshurun grew fat.
    • Jeshurun kicked.
    • You grew fat, thick, and gorged.
    • He abandoned the God who made him.
    • He treated with contempt the Rock of his salvation.
16. 32:16
    • They made him jealous with foreign gods.
    • They provoked him to anger with abominations.
17. 32:17
    • They sacrificed to demons, not to God.
    • They sacrificed to gods they had not known.
    • The gods were new ones that had come recently.
    • Your fathers had not dreaded them.
18. 32:18
    • You neglected the Rock that begot you.
    • You forgot the God who gave you birth.
19. 32:19
    • The LORD saw it.
    • The LORD spurned them.
    • The reason was the provocation of his sons and his daughters.
20. 32:20
    • He said he will hide his face from them.
    • He said he will see what their end will be.
    • He said they are a generation of perversity.
    • He said they are children in whom there is no faithfulness.
21. 32:21
    • They made him jealous with what is not a god.
    • They provoked him to anger with their worthless idols.
    • He will make them jealous with those who are not a people.
    • He will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
22. 32:22
    • A fire is kindled in his anger.
    • The fire burns to the lowest Sheol.
    • The fire consumes the earth and its produce.
    • The fire sets ablaze the foundations of the mountains.
23. 32:23
    • He will heap evils upon them.
    • He will use up his arrows on them.
24. 32:24
    • They will be wasted with hunger.
    • They will be devoured with burning plague.
    • They will suffer bitter destruction.
    • He will send the teeth of beasts against them.
    • He will send the venom of creatures that crawl in the dust.
25. 32:25
    • Outside, the sword will bereave.
    • Inside the chambers, there will be terror.
    • It will take the young man and the young woman.
    • It will take the nursing child along with the gray-haired man.
26. 32:26
    • He said he would scatter or shatter them.
    • The Hebrew word for what he would do to them is obscure.
    • He said he would make the memory of them cease from among mankind.
27. 32:27
    • He held back because he feared the provocation of the enemy.
    • He feared their adversaries would misjudge the matter.
    • He feared they would say their own hand was raised high.
    • He feared they would say the LORD had not done all this.
28. 32:28
    • They are a nation that has lost counsel.
    • There is no understanding in them.
29. 32:29
    • If they were wise, they would understand this.
    • They would discern their latter end.
30. 32:30
    • The question is asked how one could chase a thousand.
    • The question is asked how two could put ten thousand to flight.
    • This could only be because their Rock had sold them.
    • This could only be because the LORD had handed them over.
31. 32:31
    • Their rock is not like our Rock.
    • Our enemies themselves are judges of this.
32. 32:32
    • Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom.
    • Their vine comes from the fields of Gomorrah.
    • Their grapes are poisonous grapes.
    • Their clusters are bitter.
33. 32:33
    • Their wine is the venom of serpents.
    • Their wine is the cruel poison of cobras.
34. 32:34
    • He asks whether this is not stored up with him.
    • He asks whether it is not sealed in his treasuries.
35. 32:35
    • Vengeance and recompense belong to him.
    • Their foot will slip at the appointed time.
    • The day of their disaster is near.
    • What is prepared for them hurries to come.
36. 32:36
    • The LORD will judge his people.
    • The LORD will have compassion on his servants.
    • This happens when he sees that their strength is gone.
    • This happens when there is no one left, bond or free.
37. 32:37
    • He will say, Where are their gods?
    • He will say, Where is the rock in which they took refuge?
38. 32:38
    • Those gods ate the fat of their sacrifices.
    • Those gods drank the wine of their drink offerings.
    • He says let them rise up and help you.
    • He says let them be a shelter over you.
39. 32:39
    • He says to see now that he, he alone, is he.
    • There is no god beside him.
    • He kills and he makes alive.
    • He wounds and he heals.
    • No one delivers out of his hand.
40. 32:40
    • He lifts up his hand to heaven.
    • He says, I live forever.
41. 32:41
    • If he sharpens his flashing sword, and his hand grasps judgment, he will act.
    • He will return vengeance to his adversaries.
    • He will repay those who hate him.
42. 32:42
    • He will make his arrows drunk with blood.
    • His sword will devour flesh.
    • This is with the blood of the slain and the captives.
    • The final phrase refers either to the heads of the enemy's long-haired leaders or to the beginning of vengeance on the enemy; the Hebrew is ambiguous.
43. 32:43
    • The nations are called to rejoice with his people.
    • He will avenge the blood of his servants.
    • He will return vengeance to his adversaries.
    • He will make atonement for his land and his people.
44. 32:44
    • Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people.
    • Hoshea son of Nun was with him.
45. 32:45
    • Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel.
46. 32:46
    • Moses told them to set their hearts on all the words he testifies among them that day.
    • He told them they shall command their children to keep and do all the words of this law.
47. 32:47
    • It is not an empty word for them.
    • It is their life.
    • By this word they will prolong their days on the land.
    • They are crossing the Jordan to possess that land.
48. 32:48
    • The LORD spoke to Moses on that same day.
49. 32:49
    • The LORD told Moses to go up to this mountain of Abarim, Mount Nebo.
    • Mount Nebo is in the land of Moab.
    • Mount Nebo is opposite Jericho.
    • The LORD told him to look at the land of Canaan.
    • The LORD is giving the land of Canaan to the children of Israel as a possession.
50. 32:50
    • The LORD told Moses to die on the mountain he goes up.
    • The LORD told Moses to be gathered to his people.
    • Aaron, Moses' brother, died on Mount Hor.
    • Aaron was gathered to his people.
51. 32:51
    • The reason is that they acted unfaithfully against the LORD among the children of Israel.
    • This happened at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.
    • The reason is that they did not treat the LORD as holy among the children of Israel.
52. 32:52
    • Moses will see the land from opposite it.
    • Moses will not enter the land.
    • The LORD is giving that land to the children of Israel.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

32:1

Calling on heaven and earth to listen was legal language. Ancient treaties and contracts named witnesses who could be called on later if the agreement was broken; the song opens by summoning the two largest witnesses available.

32:2

In that climate rain fell in one season and not the other, and the heavy overnight dew was a real water source for crops through the dry months. Comparing teaching to rain and dew is not just about gentleness; it is about something a field cannot live without.

32:3

"LORD" in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, written in Hebrew with four letters usually transcribed YHWH. Readers said "Lord" aloud in its place, and English translations follow that custom. To announce the name is to state publicly who he is and what he has done.

32:4

"Rock" is a fixed title for God in this song, used seven or eight times in it. The picture is a crag or cliff: high ground you retreat to when attacked, and stone that does not shift under you.

32:5

The Hebrew of this line is garbled and no translation of it is certain. "Spot" means a blemish or mark of the kind that would disqualify an animal from sacrifice; the sense seems to be that the flaw on these people shows they are not behaving as his children.

32:6

The Hebrew verb behind "bought" covers buying, acquiring, producing and fathering, and translators divide over which is meant here. It can describe purchasing a slave out of another owner's hands, or a parent bringing a child into being.

32:7

Most people could not read, so a nation's history lived in the memory of its older members. "Ask thy father" is not sentimental advice; the elders were the archive, and consulting them was how you checked a fact.

32:8

The manuscripts disagree here. The traditional Hebrew text reads "the sons of Israel"; the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ancient Greek translation read "the sons of God," meaning heavenly beings, the nations being divided up to match their number, while the LORD kept Israel for himself (verse 9).

32:9

Jacob is the ancestor who was renamed Israel; his name is used throughout as a name for the whole nation. "Share" and "portion" are the vocabulary of dividing land or plunder, where each party draws a lot and receives an allotted piece.

32:10

"Apple of the eye" in the King James translates a Hebrew phrase meaning the pupil, the most delicate part of the body, which a person shields without having to think about it.

32:11

The Hebrew bird is the largest raptor known in the region, either the eagle or the griffon vulture. Ancient writers described the parent breaking up the nest to force the fledglings into the air, then flying beneath them to catch them.

32:12

In the King James Bible, "strange" usually means foreign or belonging to someone else, not odd or weird.

32:13

"High places" here means the heights and ridges of the country, not the hilltop shrines the phrase refers to elsewhere; riding over them means holding the land as its master. Wild bees nested in rock crevices and olive trees grew out of stony ground, so honey and oil did come out of rock.

32:14

Bashan was the high pasture land east of the Sea of Galilee, proverbial for heavy cattle and rams. "Curds" is soured, thickened milk, an everyday food. The Hebrew for "the finest wheat" says literally "the kidney fat of wheat", kidney fat being the richest part of an animal, so the phrase means the choicest grain.

32:15

Jeshurun is a rare poetic nickname for Israel, built on a Hebrew root meaning straight or upright. Calling the nation "the upright one" in the same breath as describing it as an overfed animal kicking at its owner is deliberate.

32:16

"Jealousy" here is the jealousy of a betrayed husband or wife, not petty envy; the agreement between God and Israel was regularly described in marriage terms, so worshiping other gods counted as adultery. "Abominations" is the standard word for the objects and practices belonging to other gods, things treated as revolting rather than merely disapproved of.

32:17

The Hebrew word is shedim, borrowed from Mesopotamian usage where it named lesser spirit powers. The charge in the line is about address rather than about the nature of these beings: whatever they sacrificed to, it was not the LORD.

32:18

The two verbs are parental in different ways. The first is the ordinary word for a father begetting a child; the second is the word used of a mother in labor giving birth.

32:20

To "hide the face" is an idiom for deliberately withdrawing attention and protection. It is the exact reverse of the blessing in which God makes his face shine on someone.

32:21

The two halves of the verse mirror each other term for term. They wounded him with a no-god, something that is not God at all; he will wound them with a no-people, a nation of no standing.

32:22

Sheol was the underworld of Hebrew thought, the place below where all the dead go, not a place of punishment for the wicked. The King James "hell" carries later associations the Hebrew word does not. "The lowest Sheol" means as far down as anything goes.

32:23

Arrows are a standard image for harm sent from a distance and arriving without warning, disease, famine, defeat. The disasters listed in the next verses are what the arrows are.

32:24

The words translated "burning fever" and "bitter plague" name destructive forces; one of them, Resheph, was also the name of a Canaanite god associated with plague and arrows. The line stacks up the ordinary killers of the ancient world: starvation, epidemic, wild animals, snakebite.

32:25

This is a besieged town: outside the walls the enemy's sword, inside the houses panic with nowhere to run. "Virgin" in the KJV normally just means a young unmarried woman, and "suckling" means a baby still nursing. The pairing runs deliberately from youngest to oldest to say that nobody is missed.

32:26

The Hebrew verb here occurs nowhere else and its meaning is uncertain. Proposals range from "blow them away like chaff" to "cut them to pieces."

32:27

"Our own hand won" uses the raised or high hand as the standard image for power actually exerted. The concern in the verse is about how a defeat would be read by the people who inflicted it.

32:30

One soldier routing a thousand runs the other way elsewhere in these books, where Israel's few drive off the many; here the arithmetic is reversed. "Sold them" is the language of an owner handing a slave over to somebody else.

32:31

"Rock" is used here of the gods of other nations too, the same title, applied to whatever a people relies on for protection.

32:32

Sodom and Gomorrah were the cities destroyed by fire in Genesis 19. By this period their names worked as shorthand for total corruption followed by total ruin, and the "fields" are the plain around them, remembered as burnt and barren ground.

32:33

"Dragons" is the KJV's word for large serpents or sea monsters; here it means snakes. An "asp" is a cobra, a snake whose bite was known to be fatal.

32:34

Valuables and legal documents were kept in sealed storerooms, and a clay or wax seal proved nothing had been removed or altered. The picture is of a record kept intact until the day it is brought out.

32:35

In the ancient world, avenging a death was the right and the obligation of the victim's family. The claim in this line is that this particular right belongs to God and not to anyone else.

32:36

The Hebrew verb rendered "change his heart" means to relent or turn back from a course of action; it does not mean repenting of a sin. The last phrase, literally "none shut up or left," is an idiom whose sense is disputed; it is usually taken as a pair of opposites covering everybody, bond and free, or confined and at large.

32:37

Calling a god "their rock" means the thing they hid behind for safety. Here it is a question: where is that safety now?

32:38

At a sacrifice the fat was burned on the altar and wine was poured out on the ground as a drink offering. Both were understood as the god's own share of the meal. The taunt is that gods who have been taking the food should now do the work.

32:40

Raising a hand toward the sky was the physical gesture of swearing an oath, as raising a hand in a courtroom is now. "As I live" was the standard oath formula, in which the speaker stakes his own existence on what he is promising.

32:41

"Whet" is an old word for sharpening a blade by rubbing it on a stone.

32:42

The end of the verse is ambiguous in Hebrew. The word rosh means both "head" and "beginning" or "chief," so the line can be read either as "from the heads of the enemy leaders" or as "from the first act of vengeance on the enemy."

32:43

This verse survives in several different lengths. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the ancient Greek version contain extra lines calling on the heavens and on divine beings to bow down; the traditional Hebrew text has the shorter form used here.

32:44

Hoshea was Joshua's original name; Numbers 13:16 records Moses changing it. Using the older form at this point is unusual, and may be a deliberate archaism.

32:46

"Declaring" translates courtroom language: Moses is putting the words on record as formal testimony that can be cited against the people later if they break the agreement.

32:47

"A vain thing" means something empty and useless. Moses is saying these words are not just talk.

32:49

The Abarim are the range of highlands east of the Dead Sea; Nebo is a peak in that range, in Moab, the territory east of the Jordan. From its summit the Jordan valley and Jericho are visible roughly twenty miles to the west.

32:50

"Gathered to your people" is a set phrase for dying, literally joining one's ancestors, which in practice meant being laid in the family burial place. Aaron was Moses' older brother and Israel's first high priest; his death on Mount Hor is recorded in Numbers 20.

32:51

Meribah-kadesh was a stopping place in the desert of Zin, south of Canaan, where the people quarreled over the lack of water and Moses produced it by striking a rock rather than speaking to it as he had been told (Numbers 20:1–13). The name Meribah means "quarrelling." To treat someone as holy is to publicly set them apart as different; the charge is that the failure happened in full view of the nation.

32:52

From the top of Mount Nebo you can see far across the river. Moses would see the land but never walk in it.