Part 229

A canticle for the remembrance of the law. Moses is commanded to go up into a mountain, from whence he shall see the promised land but not enter into it.

32:1. Hear, O ye heavens, the things I speak, let the earth give ear to the words of my mouth.

32:2. 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.

32:3. Because I will invoke the name of the Lord: give ye magnificence to our God.

32:4. The works of God are perfect, and all his ways are judgments: God is faithful and without any iniquity, he is just and right.

32:5. They have sinned against him, and are none of his children in their filth: they are a wicked and perverse generation.

32:6. 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?

32:7. 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.

32:8. 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.

32:9. But the Lord’s portion is his people: Jacob the lot of his inheritance.

32:10. 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.

32:11. 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.

32:12. The Lord alone was his leader: and there was no strange god with him.

32:13. 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,

32:14. 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.

32:15. 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.

32:16. They provoked him by strange gods, and stirred him up to anger, with their abominations.

32:17. They sacrificed to devils and not to God: to gods whom they knew not: that were newly come up, whom their fathers worshipped not.

32:18. Thou hast forsaken the God that begot thee, and hast forgotten the Lord that created thee.

32:19. The Lord saw, and was moved to wrath: because his own sons and daughters provoked him.

32:20. 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.

32:21. 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.

32:22. A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell: and shall devour the earth with her increase, and shall burn the foundations of the mountains.

32:23. I will heap evils upon them, and will spend my arrows among them.

32:24. They shall be consumed with famine, and birds shall devour them with a most bitter bite: I will send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the fury of creatures that trail upon the ground, and of serpents.

32:25. Without, the sword shall lay them waste, and terror within, both the young man and the virgin, the sucking child with the man in years.

32:26. I said: Where are they? I will make the memory of them to cease from among men.

32:27. But for the wrath of the enemies I have deferred it: lest perhaps their enemies might be proud, and should say: Our mighty hand, and not the Lord, hath done all these things.