The Song of Moses

From: Messages of God's Love: 1938

Narrator: Chris Genthree

Deuteronomy 32:1-45¹Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. ²My 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: ³Because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. ⁴He 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. ⁵They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. ⁶Do 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? ⁷Remember 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. ⁸When 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. ⁹For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. ¹⁰He 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. ¹¹As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: ¹²So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. ¹³He 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; ¹⁴Butter 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. ¹⁵But 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. ¹⁶They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. ¹⁷They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. ¹⁸Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee. ¹⁹And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. ²⁰And 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. ²¹They 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. ²²For 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. ²³I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. ²⁴They 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. ²⁵The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. ²⁶I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men: ²⁷Were 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. ²⁸For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. ²⁹O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! ³⁰How 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? ³¹For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. ³²For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: ³³Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. ³⁴Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures? ³⁵To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; 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. ³⁶For 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. ³⁷And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, ³⁸Which 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. ³⁹See 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. ⁴⁰For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever. ⁴¹If 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. ⁴²I 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. ⁴³Rejoice, 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. ⁴⁴And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun. ⁴⁵And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel: (Deuteronomy 32:1‑45)

Part of the last words of Moses were a song, which the people were to learn. These words do not seem like a song to us, and perhaps were more a chant. They probably were sung with instruments the same as the people used when they sang at the Red Sea.

In this, are very beautiful words of praise to God, which have been read and loved by many since then. The verses about the eaglet are often read: “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the Lord alone did lead.” (Verses 11-12). While in the wilderness the people perhaps had often seen the eagles fly about their nests high up tin some rocky cliff. They knew how the mother bird shakes the nest so the young ones will have to try to fly; then how she flies about underneath them with her great wings spread out, and if the young eagles cannot fly, or become tired, they rest on her strong wings and she carries them to safety.

And so carefully God had led the people of Israel!

The last part of the song was not of joy, but of the sorrows which must come if the people worshipped idols, as the nations around them did.

After the song we read in the next chapter of the blessings which the tribes should have in the good land. One tribe, Simeon, is not spoken of in these blessings, but that tribe shared in the portion of the tribe of Judah. Joshua 19:1¹And the second lot came forth to Simeon, even for the tribe of the children of Simeon according to their families: and their inheritance was within the inheritance of the children of Judah. (Joshua 19:1) and 9.

The last words given us by Moses are in praise to God:

“Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord!” Deuteronomy 33:29²⁹Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places. (Deuteronomy 33:29).

ML 01/09/1938

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