The Wilderness Years

For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you are already rebelling against the LORD while I am still alive, how much more will you rebel after my death!

Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officers so that I may speak these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to witness against them.

For I know that after my death you will become utterly corrupt and turn from the path I have commanded you. And in the days to come, disaster will befall you because you will do evil in the sight of the LORD to provoke Him to anger by the work of your hands.”

Then Moses recited aloud to the whole assembly of Israel the words of this song from beginning to end:

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.