The Wilderness Years

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?

Gather unto me all the ancients of your tribes, and your doctors, and I will speak these words in their hearing, and will call heaven and earth to witness against them.

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.

Moses therefore spoke, in the hearing of the whole assembly of Israel, the words of this canticle, and finished it even to the end.

Hear, O ye heavens, the things I speak, let the earth give ear to the words of my mouth.

Let my doctrine gather as the rain, let my speech distil as the dew, as a shower upon the herb, and as drops upon the grass.

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?

Remember the days of old, think upon every generation: ask thy father, and he will declare to thee: thy elders and they will tell 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.

As the eagle enticing her young to fly, and hovering over them, he spread his wings, and hath taken him and carried him on his shoulders.

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

He set him upon high land: that he might eat the fruits of the fields, that he might suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hardest stone,

Butter of the herd, and milk of the sheep with the fat of lambs, and of the rams of the breed of Basan: and goats with the marrow of wheat, and might drink the purest blood of the grape.

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.