The Song of Moses

Continuing a chronological Bible study:

(Deuteronomy 32:1) "Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth."

In the last chapter the Lord told Moses to write this song and recite and teach it to the Israelites.  Chapter 32 contains his song.  It began with Moses calling on the heavens to listen and to the earth to really hear the words of this song, to be witnesses of the truth of his words against the people. 

(2) "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass."

The purpose of Moses's instruction in his song was that it drop like rain and spring up as dew upon all the people of Israel to be absorbed by them to produce good results as the rain does for the grass and plants.

(3) "Because I will publish the name of the Lord; ascribe you greatness to our God."

Moses would proclaim the name of the Lord in his song, and he called on the people themselves to attribute greatness to their God.

(4) "The Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice, a God of truth without iniquity, just and right is He."

These may actually be the first words of the song, as verses 1 through 3 may have been Moses's words of introduction to the song.  God is the Rock; Jesus is the Rock of salvation.  His work is perfect.  His work of creation and Christ's work of salvation is all perfect.  His ways are always just and true and cannot be iniquitous.  This has more recently in my life become real to me.  We don't always have to fret and worry about situations in life and how to pray and what to pray for; we can just put our trust in God as what He does is perfect.  It may not be the answer that we think we want, but in the end it is always good.  Even death is good in that the person will be with the Lord and will be in a far better place than they were on earth.  When we come to realize that what He does is always good, we can trust and not worry.  The world will be evil and bad things will happen to good people because of it, but you can be assured that God will do good.  If we fear that someone died prematurely without salvation, God knows the heart and will give them a chance to accept Christ in their last moments, or He knows that they would have never accepted Him even if they lived to 100.  God knows everything, even things that have not happened yet, and He is always good, so trust in Him, and you don't have to figure out what's right.  As Jesus said, His yoke is easy and His burden is light; just give it to Him, trust in Him.

(5) "They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not of His children, a perverse and crooked generation."

The people have corrupted themselves.  They are stained with the spot of wickedness and iniquity and cannot be God's children as His children have no such stain.  That's not to say they are without sin, but by accepting Christ, their sins are covered by His blood.  Before Christ, God provided laws for atonement of sins.  The people had become a perverse and wicked generation.

(6) "Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is He not your Father who has bought you? Has He not made you and established you?"

Do the foolish and unwise people repay the Lord in such a way, that is, by their perverse and wicked corruption?  Did they not acknowledge that He was their Father who had redeemed them from bondage in Egypt, and Christ who would redeem people with His blood?  Had He not created them and called them to Himself to be His special people?  Did they not remember how He had set them up in their own abundant land to be envied by all nations?

(7) "Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask your father and he will show you, your elders and they will tell you."

The song exhorted the people to remember the former times and consider the many generations before them.  Remember what God had done for them and remember what happened to them when they turned from Him.  It encouraged them to ask their father and their elders about those days of old and they would tell them.  That is what is meant here, but also if they asked their heavenly Father, He would show them truth and the way.

(8) "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the children of Israel."

After the flood, when the world began again to be populated, Noah and his sons, said to be all sons of Adam, were divided into their own nations (Genesis 10:32).  In the time of Abram (later Abraham) God set the boundaries of the land he would be giving to the twelve tribes of Israel (Genesis 15:18-21).

(9) "For the Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance."

The Lord had so early set the boundaries of the land that He would give to the twelve tribes of Israel (Jacob) because they were His special people whom He had allotted for Himself.

(10) "He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye."

The Lord found Jacob (Israel) in the desert land of Egypt and led him through the wilderness, a wasteland destitute of all the necessities and comforts of life, where He taught him and kept him and provided for him with the utmost care.

(11) "As an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads abroad her wings, taking them, bearing them on her wings, (12) So the Lord alone did lead him, and no strange god with him."

As an eagle stirs up her nest and flutters over her young to excite them to fly, the Lord stirred the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt where they often seemed reluctant to leave and desirous to go back to.  As an eagle might bear her young on her wings, so the Lord alone bore His people on eagles' wings (Exodus 19:4) to lead them out of Egypt.  There were no other gods helping Him do that; the Egyptian gods could not even save their own people.  

(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 suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;"

Speaking of the future as it had already come to pass because it positively would come to pass, God would make His people ride high above the other nations, conquering the nations necessary to possess that abundant land flowing with milk and honey, where they would have honey from the bees that made hives in the rocks and oil from olives that grew on rocks.

(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 you drank the pure blood of the grape."

The people would also have butter from cows, milk from sheep, and fat lambs to eat.  They would have the best rams and goats, the best wheat with fat and full grains, and pure red wine of the grapes.

(15) "But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you have grown fat, you have grown thick, you are covered with fat; then he forsook God who made him and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation."

Jeshurun, meaning upright, was a name God sometimes called Israel.  Perhaps the meaning was that the once upright Israel would grow fat and rebellious against God.  The people would grow fat, fat, fat, as it is repeated three times, due to their abundance of good things, and would forsake their Lord who had created them and made them His special people and had given them that abundance.  They would lightly esteem or give little value to the only God of their salvation.

(16) "They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger."

Because they followed strange false gods, the people provoked God to jealousy and righteous anger.  As has been discussed before, God's jealousy is not an envious one.  His is more of a zealousness in love and care for His people.  It's a righteous jealousy for what is His alone; worship and service belong to Him alone.  For example, righteous jealousy would be the jealousy a man might have if he saw another man flirting with his wife, as that right of flirting belongs only to him.  Sinful jealousy is being envious of something that doesn't belong to you which might be said of the man who was doing the flirting with a woman who was not his wife, wishing she did belong to him.

(17) "They sacrificed to devils, not to God, to gods whom they did not know, to new gods newly arrived, whom your fathers did not fear."

The people sacrificed to demons, false gods, and even new gods that had only recently come into existence, gods their fathers had never known and followed, rather than to the one and only true God.

(18) "Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful and have forgotten God who formed you."

The firm Rock of their salvation, the Rock who had created them and made them His own special people, of Him the people had become unmindful and had forgotten Him.

(19) "And when the Lord saw, He abhorred, because of the provoking of His sons and of His daughters."

When the Lord saw that the people sacrificed to false gods and demons and that they had forgotten Him, He despised them and their actions because they so provoked Him to righteous anger.

(20) "And He said, 'I will hide My face from them; I will see what their end will be, for they are a very perverse generation, children in whom is no faith.'"

The Lord would then determine to hide His face from His people and would see then what would become of them as they were a very perverse people with no faith in Him.

(21) "'They have moved Me to jealousy by what is not God; they have provoked Me to anger with their vanities, and I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.'"

That perverse generation of His people would so provoke the Lord because of their allegiance to false gods and even godlessness, that He would then call Gentiles in general, not a particular nation of people, to be His people in that He had chosen them to be taken into covenant with Him.  His people Israel would be provoked to anger and jealousy because He had chosen whom they considered to be inferior people to be His own.  The Apostle Paul would quote this very verse in Romans 10:19 and would go on to say that God would call those Gentiles His people and His beloved, those who had never before been His beloved people.

(22) "'For a fire is kindled in My anger and shall burn to the lowest hell and shall consume the earth with her increase and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.'"

The Lord's anger would be as a fire that would burn to a complete destruction as Moses had described in Deuteronomy 29:23.  That fire would consume all of Israel's increase and strength.

(23) "'I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend My arrows on them.'"

The Lord would heap one disaster after another on the people.  The Lord would be as an enemy to the people, having set His bow against them, and He would shoot every one of His arrows upon them.

(24) "'They will 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.'"

Still with the symbolic image of burning arrows, the people would be burnt with hunger and fevers and complete destruction.  The Lord would also send beasts and poisonous serpents to devour them.

(25) "'The sword without and terror within shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling with the man of gray hairs.'"

The actual swords of the enemies outside and the terror of them inside would destroy all the people, from nursing babies to young people to the very old.

(26) "'I said I would scatter them into corners; I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men.'"

The Lord had intended to "scatter them into corners," the original word "paah" meaning more like blowing them away.  He would have made the memory of them cease among men.

(27) "'Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, and lest they should say, "Our hand is high, and the Lord has not done all this."'"

It's not that the Lord feared any enemy, but had He completely destroyed all of His people, the enemy Satan and his servants would believe that they had been victorious over the Lord's people, and He had been unable to deliver them.  They would believe that they alone had destroyed God's people and that He had had nothing to do with their destruction.

(28) "'For they are a nation void of counsel, neither any understanding in them.'"

Their enemies would believe that way because they had no understanding of spiritual things in them.

(29) "O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end."

These appear to be the words of Moses, not of the Lord, although surely under a spirit of prophecy, that he wished the people were wise and would understand what their end would be if they turned away from the Lord and He in turn turned His face from them (verse 20).

(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?"

How else would it be possible that one enemy or two could chase thousands of Israelites away unless their God had given them over to be slaves of their enemies and had closed them off.

(31) "For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves judges."

The Israelites' enemies' gods were not like the true Rock of salvation of the Jews as even their enemies themselves had confessed as in Exodus 14:25.

(32) "For their vine is of the vine of Sodom and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters bitter."

It appears by what follows that Moses refers now to the Israelites, that they had become as Sodom and Gomorrah with their actions being only sin and abomination.

(33) "Their wine the poison of dragons and the cruel venom of asps."

The Israelites' doctrines and beliefs had become as poison and destruction to all who followed them.

(34) "'Is this not laid up in store with Me, sealed up among My treasures?'"

These would be the words of God, that the wicked deeds of His people had been stored in His memory, tucked away as would be treasures.

(35) "'To Me vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.'"

Vengeance and recompense is the Lord's.  Those who think they stand fast shall slide into destruction in due time.  The day of their calamity would be at hand and the evil things that God had determined in prophecy would come upon them quickly.

(36) "For the Lord shall judge His people and repent Himself for His servants when He sees that their power is gone, and none shut up or left."

Now were the words of Moses, that the Lord would judge His people.  However, He would change His conduct toward them when He saw that their power was gone and there were none remaining, neither slave nor free.

(37) "And He shall say, 'Where are their gods, the rock in whom they trusted?'"

The Lord would ask at that time where their false gods were, those gods they had trusted in instead of Him.

(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.'"

Where were those gods to whom they had offered sacrifices and drink offerings?  The Lord would suggest that those gods rise up and help the people and be their protection, as if they could.

(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 any who can deliver out of My hand.'"

The Lord would tell His people that He was the only God; there were no other gods but Him.  He had all power to kill and to make alive; He had all power to wound and to heal, and there were none who could deliver anyone out of His hand.

(40) "'For I lift up My hand to heaven, and say, "I live forever. (41) If I whet My glittering sword and My hand takes hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to My enemies and will reward them who hate Me."'"

The Lord would lift His hand up to heaven as in an oath, swearing as sure as He lived forever, that if He prepared for the execution of His righteous judgment, He would indeed follow through with vengeance on His enemies and He would repay those who hated Him.

(42) "'I will make My arrows drunk with blood and My sword shall devour flesh, with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.'"

By the numerous and various judgments God would bring upon His enemies, it would seem that His arrows would be soaked with blood, appearing drunk with blood.  His sword would devour the flesh of His enemies because of the blood of the slain whom they had killed and carried away captive.  The Lord would avenge His people for the beginning of the enemies' oppression of them to the present time.

(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 to His land and to His people."

Moses exhorted all nations of people to rejoice with God's people, indicating a future time when the Gentiles would be grafted into the vine of God's people.  God would avenge the blood of His servants by rendering vengeance on His adversaries, and He would be merciful to His land and to His people.

(44) And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun. (45) And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel.

Moses and Joshua spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of all the people.  Moses concluded the song.

(46) And he said to them, "Set your hearts on all the words which I testify among you this day, which you shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law."

Moses then exhorted the people to lay up all his words in their hearts, not just the words of his song, but all the words of the law he had given them.  They were to teach them to their children and command that they also adhere to them.

(47) "For it is not a vain thing for you because it is your life, and through this thing you shall prolong your days in the land in which you go over Jordan to possess it."

Moses told the people it was not a vain trifling matter for them to keep those words in their hearts, for those words were the key to their very lives.  And by adhering to the words of the law, the people would prolong their days in the land the Lord was giving them.

(48) And the Lord spoke to Moses that same day, saying, (49) "Go up into this mountain Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab that is across from Jericho, and behold the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel for a possession."

Then the Lord spoke to Moses.  He told him to go up into a range of mountains called Abarim, onto Mount Nebo which had formerly belonged to Moab, and was across from Jericho which lay on the other side of the Jordan in Canaan.  There he would be able to see the land of Canaan that God was giving to the Israelites.

(50) "And die on the mountain where you go up and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people; (51) Because you trespassed against Me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, because you did not sanctify Me in the midst of the children of Israel."

After Moses viewed the land the Lord was giving His people, Moses should plan to die on that mountain and be gathered with the souls of his people before him, just as his brother Aaron had died on Mount Hor and was also gathered with his people.  Moses would die on the mountain, not being able to cross over into the land God was giving His people, because he had not sanctified the Lord in the eyes of the Israelites at Meribah-Kadesh (Numbers 20:11-12).

(52) "Yet you shall see the land before you, but you shall not go there into the land which I give the children of Israel."

The Lord would allow Moses to see the land He was giving His people, even though he would not be able to go into it, as He had told him he would not in Numbers 20:12.

This Song of Moses was both a history and a prophecy of God's people Israel to be remembered by them.  It told of the great things the Lord had done for His people, but then how the people would turn from Him and follow false gods.  Judgments would come upon them because of their wickedness, but God would not completely destroy them.  God always saves a remnant and delivers them and destroys their enemies as He will continue to do till the very end.