Deuteronomy Thirty Two
by Dr. Henry M. Morris
(taken from the Defender's Study Bible)
Deuteronomy 32:1 Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
Deuteronomy 32:2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass:
Deuteronomy 32:3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
Deuteronomy 32:4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
He is the Rock. Here in Moses' song occurs the first of some forty references in Scripture to God as the Rock (note also Deuteronomy 32:15, 18, 30, and 31).
without iniquity. Whatever God does is right, by definition, and whatever He says is true. See also Psalm 33:4-5.
Deuteronomy 32:5 They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.
Deuteronomy 32:6 Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?
Deuteronomy 32:7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.
Deuteronomy 32:8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.
sons of Adam. As Moses began his final song, he reminded his people that there had been “many generations” before them. Yet he told them they had been in God's plan from the beginning, even making reference to the primeval father Adam. The different nations had received their inheritance and boundaries after the Flood and after Babel, as recorded in Genesis 10, the Table of Nations. It is noteworthy that there are seventy nations listed in this Table, where it says that “by these [families of the three sons of Noah] were the nations divided in the earth after the flood” (Genesis 10:32). These seventy did not include Israel, for this was before the days of Abraham. Nevertheless, just as there were seventy people in the original nation of Israel as they entered Egypt with Jacob (Genesis 46:27), so God in His prescience had ordained “bounds” for seventy original nations in the world after the Flood. Although the number of Israelites had multiplied by a factor of thirty thousand or more in the four hundred or so years in Egypt, the number “seventy” has been associated with Israel in many ways ever since (seventy elders, seventy in the Sanhedrin, seventy Septuagint translators, seventy weeks of Daniel, seventy years captivity, etc.). The number of nations in the world, on the other hand, has only slightly more than doubled in the four thousand or so years since Babel.
Deuteronomy 32:9 For the LORD'S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
Deuteronomy 32:10 He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.
waste howling wilderness. This picturesque description of the Sinai desert speaks of it as “howling” as if in anguish. This was the dismal home of the faithless Israelites for forty years, until the Lord could develop them into a nation ready to conquer the promised land.
apple of his eye. There are five references in the Bible to “the apple of the eye,” meaning the pupil of the eye, and speaking of something of great value to the owner. Three times (Deuteronomy 32:10, Lamentations 2:18 and Zechariah 2:8), the phrase refers to Israel as God's choice permission. It is also applied to individual believers (Psalm 17:7-8). Perhaps most significantly, it is applied to the written word of God (Proverbs 7:1-2).
Deuteronomy 32:11 As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:
Deuteronomy 32:12 So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.
Deuteronomy 32:13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;
Deuteronomy 32:14 Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.
Deuteronomy 32:15 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
Jeshurun waxed fat. The name Jeshurun occurs only three times, and only by Moses; it seems to be a symbolic name for Israel (Deuteronomy 33:5, 26). It is possibly related to the lost book of Jasher, mentioned only in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18. Both names mean “uprightness.”
Deuteronomy 32:16 They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger.
Deuteronomy 32:17 They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.
sacrificed unto devils. The “strange gods” and “abominations” (that is, idols) of Deuteronomy 32:16 are the “devils” (that is, demons) of Deuteronomy 32:17. It is important to remember that the worship of any “god” or religious system other than the true God of creation and redemption is really the worship of evil spirits. Compare 1 Corinthians 10:20.
Deuteronomy 32:18 Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.
Deuteronomy 32:19 And when the LORD saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters.
Deuteronomy 32:20 And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.
Deuteronomy 32:21 They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
Deuteronomy 32:22 For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
the lowest hell. The lowest compartment of sheol (Hebrew word here translated “hell”) is apparently that portion of the great pit at the center of the earth where God “spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment” (2 Peter 2:4; see note on this verse). That the earth will eventually be consumed by fire is confirmed by 2 Peter 3:10.
Deuteronomy 32:23 I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.
Deuteronomy 32:24 They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.
Deuteronomy 32:25 The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.
Deuteronomy 32:26 I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men:
Deuteronomy 32:27 Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.
Deuteronomy 32:28 For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.
Deuteronomy 32:29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!
Deuteronomy 32:30 How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?
Deuteronomy 32:31 For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.
Deuteronomy 32:32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:
Deuteronomy 32:33 Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.
Deuteronomy 32:34 Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?
Deuteronomy 32:35 To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
Deuteronomy 32:36 For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.
Deuteronomy 32:37 And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted,
Deuteronomy 32:38 Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.
Deuteronomy 32:39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
Deuteronomy 32:40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.
Deuteronomy 32:41 If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me.
Deuteronomy 32:42 I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.
Deuteronomy 32:43 Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.
Deuteronomy 32:44 And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun.
Deuteronomy 32:45 And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel:
Deuteronomy 32:46 And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 32:47 For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.
Deuteronomy 32:48 And the LORD spake unto Moses that selfsame day, saying,
Deuteronomy 32:49 Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession:
Deuteronomy 32:50 And die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people:
Deuteronomy 32:51 Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel.
Deuteronomy 32:52 Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.