God

Take this book, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God: that it may be there for a testimony against thee.

For I know thy obstinacy, and thy most stiff neck. While I am yet living, and going in with you, you have always been rebellious against the Lord: how much more when I shall be dead?

For I know that, after my death, you will do wickedly, and will quickly turn aside form the way that I have commanded you: and evils shall come upon you in the latter times, when you shall do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him by the works of your hands.

Because I will invoke the name of the Lord: give ye magnificence to our God.

The works of God are perfect, and all his ways are judgments: God is faithful and without any iniquity, he is just and right.

They have sinned against him, and are none of his children in their filth: they are a wicked and perverse generation.

Is this the return thou makest to the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he thy father, that hath possessed thee, and made thee, and created thee?

When the Most High divided the nations: when he separated the sons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel.

But the Lord's portion is his people: Jacob the lot of his inheritance.

He found him in a desert land, in a place of horror, and of vast wilderness: he led him about, and taught him: and he kept him as the apple of his eye.

The Lord alone was his leader: and there was no strange god with him.

The beloved grew fat, and kicked: he grew fat, and thick and gross, he forsook God who made him, and departed from God his saviour.

They provoked him by strange gods, and stirred him up to anger, with their abominations.

They sacrificed to devils and not to God: to gods whom they knew not: that were newly come up, whom their fathers worshipped not.

Thou hast forsaken the God that begot thee, and hast forgotten the Lord that created thee.

The Lord saw, and was moved to wrath: because his own sons and daughters provoked him.

And he said: I will hide my face from them, and will consider what their last end shall be: for it is a perverse generation, and unfaithful children.

They have provoked me with that which was no god, and have angered me with their vanities: and I will provoke them with that which is no people, and will vex them with a foolish nation.

I will heap evils upon them, and will spend my arrows among them.

They shall be consumed with famine, and birds shall devour them with a most bitter bite: I will send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the fury of creatures that trail upon the ground, and of serpents.

I said: Where are they? I will make the memory of them to cease from among men.

But for the wrath of the enemies I have deferred it: lest perhaps their enemies might be proud, and should say: Our mighty hand, and not the Lord, hath done all these things.

How should one pursue after a thousand, and two chase ten thousand? Was it not, because their God had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up?

Are not these things stored up with me, and sealed up in my treasures?

Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide: the day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to come.