The Song of Moses

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. Let my teaching fall like rain and my speech settle like dew, like gentle rain on new grass, like showers on tender plants. For I will proclaim the name of the LORD. Ascribe greatness to our God!

The first line names the two witnesses of Deuteronomy 31:28, so the Song itself takes the stand as testimony.

He is the Rock, His work is perfect; all His ways are just. A God of faithfulness without injustice, righteous and upright is He. His people have acted corruptly toward Him; the spot on them is not that of His children, but of a perverse and crooked generation. Is this how you repay the LORD, O foolish and senseless people? Is He not your Father and Creator? Has He not made you and established you?

The Song opens its case with the character of God before it names any fault in Israel.

Remember the days of old; consider the years long past. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will inform you. When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He divided the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance.

Verse 9 gives the reason Israel stands apart among the nations in the rest of the Song.

He found him in a desert land, in a barren, howling wilderness; He surrounded him, He instructed him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, He spread His wings to catch them and carried them on His pinions. The LORD alone led him, and no foreign god was with him. He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him the produce of the field. He nourished him with honey from the rock and oil from the flinty crag, with curds from the herd and milk from the flock, with the fat of lambs, with rams from Bashan, and goats, with the choicest grains of wheat. From the juice of the finest grapes you drank the wine.

These verses recall the wilderness years and the gifts of Canaan as the debt Israel owed.

But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked—becoming fat, bloated, and gorged. He abandoned the God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation. They provoked His jealousy with foreign gods; they enraged Him with abominations. They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear. You ignored the Rock who brought you forth; you forgot the God who gave you birth.

Verse 15 is the hinge of the first head, where plenty becomes the occasion of revolt.

When the LORD saw this, He rejected them, provoked to anger by His sons and daughters. He said: “I will hide My face from them; I will see what will be their end. For they are a perverse generation—children of unfaithfulness. They have provoked My jealousy by that which is not God; they have enraged Me with their worthless idols. So I will make them jealous by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation without understanding. For a fire has been kindled by My anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol; it consumes the earth and its produce, and scorches the foundations of the mountains. I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend My arrows against them. They will be wasted from hunger and ravaged by pestilence and bitter plague; I will send the fangs of wild beasts against them, with the venom of vipers that slither in the dust. Outside, the sword will take their children, and inside, terror will strike the young man and the young woman, the infant and the gray-haired man.

The LORD answers jealousy with jealousy in verse 21, and verses 23 to 25 spell out the troubles Deuteronomy 31:17 foretold.

I would have said that I would cut them to pieces and blot out their memory from mankind, if I had not dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest their adversaries misunderstand and say: ‘Our own hand has prevailed; it was not the LORD who did all this.’” Israel is a nation devoid of counsel, with no understanding among them. If only they were wise, they would understand it; they would comprehend their fate. How could one man pursue a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had given them up? For their rock is not like our Rock, even our enemies concede. But their vine is from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous; their clusters are bitter. Their wine is the venom of serpents, the deadly poison of cobras.

Verse 31 sets the enemy's rock against Israel's Rock, the name of God the Song began with in verse 4.

Rejoice, O heavens, with Him, and let all God’s angels worship Him. Rejoice, O nations, with His people; for He will avenge the blood of His children. He will take vengeance on His adversaries and repay those who hate Him; He will cleanse His land and His people.

The last verse turns the Song outward, so its close is good news for Israel and the Gentiles alike.

Then Moses came with Joshua son of Nun and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people. When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all these words I testify among you today, so that you may command your children to carefully follow all the words of this law. For they are not idle words to you, because they are your life, and by them you will live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

Moses binds the Song to the law of the whole book as the people's life in the land.