Deuteronomy 31:30-32:27 (NKJV)
30 Then Moses spoke in the hearing of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song until they were ended:
32:1 “Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;
And hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
2 Let my teaching drop as the rain,
My speech distill as the dew,
As raindrops on the tender herb,
And as showers on the grass.
3 For I proclaim the name of the Lord:
Ascribe greatness to our God.
4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect;
For all His ways are justice,
A God of truth and without injustice;
Righteous and upright is He.
5 “They have corrupted themselves;
They are not His children,
Because of their blemish:
A perverse and crooked generation.
6 Do you thus deal with the Lord,
O foolish and unwise people?
Is He not your Father, who bought you?
Has He not 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 divided their inheritance to the nations,
When He separated the sons of Adam,
He set the boundaries of the peoples
According to the number of the children of Israel.
9 For the Lord’s portion is His people;
Jacob is the place of His inheritance.
10 “He found him in a desert land
And in the wasteland, a howling wilderness;
He encircled him, He instructed him,
He kept him as the apple of His eye.
11 As an eagle stirs up its nest,
Hovers over its young,
Spreading out its wings, taking them up,
Carrying them on its wings,
12 So the Lord alone led him,
And there was no foreign god with him.
13 “He made him ride in the heights of the earth,
That he might eat the produce of the fields;
He made him draw honey from the rock,
And oil from the flinty rock;
14 Curds from the cattle, and milk of the flock,
With fat of lambs;
And rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats,
With the choicest wheat;
And you drank wine, the blood of the grapes.
15 “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked;
You grew fat, you grew thick,
You are obese!
Then he forsook God who made him,
And scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
16 They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods;
With abominations they provoked Him to anger.
17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God,
To gods they did not know,
To new gods, new arrivals
That your fathers did not fear.
18 Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful,
And have forgotten the God who fathered you.
19 “And when the Lord saw it, He 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 faith.
21 They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God;
They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols.
But I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation;
I will move them to anger by a foolish nation.
22 For a fire is kindled in My anger,
And shall burn to the lowest hell;
It shall consume the earth with her increase,
And set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
23 ‘I will heap disasters on them;
I will spend My arrows on them.
24 They shall be wasted with hunger,
Devoured by pestilence and bitter destruction;
I will also send against them the teeth of beasts,
With the poison of serpents of the dust.
25 The sword shall destroy outside;
There shall be terror within
For the young man and virgin,
The nursing child with the man of gray hairs.
26 I would have said, “I will dash them in pieces,
I will make the memory of them to cease from among men,”
27 Had I not feared the wrath of the enemy,
Lest their adversaries should misunderstand,
Lest they should say, “Our hand is high;
And it is not the Lord who has done all this.” ’
Today’s reading is basically the first half of the song that God gave to Moses earlier in chapter 31, the song that Moses told the people to write down, teach to their children, and put it in their mouths “that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel” (31:19). The Israelites were to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest these words so that when God would ultimately hide His face from them – turn away from them for their rebellion – they would remember, understand why God did this, and hopefully repent and turn back to God.
In the song, God is proclaimed to be the Rock whose way is perfect, and a God of truth without injustice (v. 4). He is their Father who bought them (v. 6), a hint toward God’s Son, Jesus, who would ultimately give His life for the sins of all mankind, therefore “buying them back” – redeeming them – from sin and offering forgiveness and eternal life.
One might think that the Israelites would never again turn their backs on God. All they had to do was remember how He delivered them unscathed from Egypt, provided for them in the wilderness, gave them to walk safely through the Red Sea, fed them with meat and manna from heaven, and now was delivering them to the land He had promised to give them… But it was not to be. Their sinful stubbornness would always get the better of them. God’s anger would indeed burn against them so that their disobedience would cause them great harm and danger – all brought on by themselves.
Repent, dear saint, of all your sinful rebellion against God – your harsh words to a neighbor, your judgmentalism, your self-aggrandizement, your thinking that you can do anything without God’s help. Remember His love toward You, that He gives you everything you need for your life, and run to the Divine Service regularly so that you may be strengthened in your faith to withstand the assaults of the devil and your sinful flesh, and live to God’s glory and the good of your neighbor. Let us pray: Dear God, thank You for all Your benefits, through Jesus Christ, Your Son. Amen.