Deuteronomy 32

• 1. Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
• 2. Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.
• 3. I will proclaim the name of the LORD. Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
• 4. He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.
• 5. They have acted corruptly toward him; to their shame they are no longer his children, but a warped and crooked generation.
• 6. Is this the way you repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?
• 7. Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.
• 8. When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.
• 9. For the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.
• 10. In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
• 11. like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions.
• 12. The LORD alone led him; no foreign god was with him.
• 13. He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him with the fruit of the fields. He nourished him with honey from the rock, and with oil from the flinty crag,
• 14. with curds and milk from herd and flock and with fattened lambs and goats, with choice rams of Bashan and the finest kernels of wheat. You drank the foaming blood of the grape.
• 15. Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; filled with food, he became heavy and sleek. He abandoned the God who made him and rejected the Rock his Savior.
• 16. They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols.
• 17. They sacrificed to demons, which are not God- gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear.
• 18. You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.
• 19. The LORD saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters.
• 20. "I will hide my face from them," he said, "and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful.
• 21. They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.
• 22. For a fire has been kindled by my wrath, one that burns to the realm of death below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains.
• 23. "I will heap calamities upon them and spend my arrows against them.
• 24. I will send wasting famine against them, consuming pestilence and deadly plague; I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts, the venom of vipers that glide in the dust.
• 25. In the street the sword will make them childless; in their homes terror will reign. Young men and young women will perish, infants and gray-haired men.
• 26. I said I would scatter them and blot out their memory from mankind,
• 27. but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest the adversary misunderstand and say, 'Our hand has triumphed; the LORD has not done all this.'"
• 28. They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them.
• 29. If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be!
• 30. How could one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had given them up?
• 31. For their rock is not like our Rock, as even our enemies concede.
• 32. Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are filled with poison, and their clusters with bitterness.
• 33. Their wine is the venom of serpents, the deadly poison of cobras.
• 34. "Have I not kept this in reserve and sealed it in my vaults?
• 35. It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them."
• 36. The LORD will judge his people and have compassion on his servants when he sees their strength is gone and no one is left, slave or free.
• 37. He will say: "Now where are their gods, the rock they took refuge in,
• 38. the gods who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up to help you! Let them give you shelter!
• 39. "See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.
• 40. I lift my hand to heaven and declare: As surely as I live forever,
• 41. when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me.
• 42. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy leaders."
• 43. Rejoice, O nations, with his people,, for he will avenge the blood of his servants; he will take vengeance on his enemies and make atonement for his land and people.
• 44. Moses came with Joshua son of Nun and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people.
• 45. When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel,
• 46. he said to them, "Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law.
• 47. They are not just idle words for you-they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess."
• 48. On that same day the LORD told Moses,
• 49. "Go up into the Abarim Range to Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho, and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites as their own possession.
• 50. There on the mountain that you have climbed you will die and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people.
• 51. This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites.
• 52. Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel."

Psalms 124

• 1. If the LORD had not been on our side- let Israel say-
• 2. if the LORD had not been on our side when men attacked us,
• 3. when their anger flared against us, they would have swallowed us alive;
• 4. the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us,
• 5. the raging waters would have swept us away.
• 6. Praise be to the LORD, who has not let us be torn by their teeth.
• 7. We have escaped like a bird out of the fowler's snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped.
• 8. Our help is in the name of the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Isaiah 59

• 1. Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.
• 2. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
• 3. For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things.
• 4. No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil.
• 5. They hatch the eggs of vipers and spin a spider's web. Whoever eats their eggs will die, and when one is broken, an adder is hatched.
• 6. Their cobwebs are useless for clothing; they cannot cover themselves with what they make. Their deeds are evil deeds, and acts of violence are in their hands.
• 7. Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are evil thoughts; ruin and destruction mark their ways.
• 8. The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks in them will know peace.
• 9. So justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows.
• 10. Like the blind we grope along the wall, feeling our way like men without eyes. At midday we stumble as if it were twilight; among the strong, we are like the dead.
• 11. We all growl like bears; we moan mournfully like doves. We look for justice, but find none; for deliverance, but it is far away.
• 12. For our offenses are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us. Our offenses are ever with us, and we acknowledge our iniquities:
• 13. rebellion and treachery against the LORD, turning our backs on our God, fomenting oppression and revolt, uttering lies our hearts have conceived.
• 14. So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter.
• 15. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice.
• 16. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him.
• 17. He put on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
• 18. According to what they have done, so will he repay wrath to his enemies and retribution to his foes; he will repay the islands their due.
• 19. From the west, men will fear the name of the LORD, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory. For he will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the LORD drives along.
• 20. "The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins," declares the LORD.
• 21. "As for me, this is my covenant with them," says the LORD. "My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth, or from the mouths of your children, or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever," says the LORD.

New International Version

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