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Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 32

1 Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.⁠ 2 My teaching will drop like the rain, my sayings will drip like the dew, as rain drops upon the grass, and showers upon new growth. 3 For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; you must acknowledge the greatness of our God. 4 As for the Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are just. He is a reliable God who is never unjust, he is fair and upright.⁠ 5 His people have been unfaithful to him; they have not acted like his children—this is their sin. They are a perverse and deceitful generation. 6 Is this how you repay the Lord, you foolish, unwise people? Is he not your father, your Creator? He has made you and established you.⁠ 7 Remember the ancient days; bear in mind the years of past generations. Ask your father and he will inform you, your elders, and they will tell you. 8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided up humankind, he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the heavenly assembly.⁠ 9 For the Lord’s allotment is his people, Jacob is his special possession.⁠ 10 The Lord found him in a desolate land, in an empty wasteland where animals howl.⁠ He continually guarded him and taught him;⁠ he continually protected him like the pupil of his eye.⁠ 11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, so the Lord spread out his wings and took him,⁠ he lifted him up on his pinions.⁠ 12 The Lord alone was guiding him, no foreign god was with him. 13 He enabled him to travel over the heights of the earth,⁠ and he ate of the produce of the fields. He provided honey for him from the cliffs, and olive oil from the hardest of rocks,⁠ 14 butter from the herd and milk from the flock, along with the fat of lambs, rams and goats of Bashan, along with the best of the kernels of wheat; and from the juice of grapes you drank wine.⁠ 15 But Jeshurun became fat and kicked; you got fat, thick, and stuffed!⁠ Then he deserted the God who made him, and treated the Rock who saved him with contempt. 16 They made him jealous with other gods, they enraged him with abhorrent idols. 17 They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had not known;⁠ to new gods who had recently come along, gods your ancestors had not known about.⁠ 18 You forgot the Rock who fathered you, and put out of mind the God who gave you birth.⁠ 19 But the Lord took note and despised them because his sons and daughters enraged him. 20 He said, “I will reject them. I will see what will happen to them;⁠ for they are a perverse generation, children who show no loyalty. 21 They have made me jealous with false gods, enraging me with their worthless gods;⁠ so I will make them jealous with a people they do not recognize, with a nation slow to learn I will enrage them. 22 For a fire has been kindled by my anger, and it burns to lowest Sheol; it consumes the earth and its produce,⁠ and ignites the foundations of the mountains. 23 I will increase their disasters; I will use up my arrows on them.⁠ 24 They will be starved by famine, eaten by plague, and bitterly stung;⁠ I will send the teeth of wild animals against them, along with the poison of creatures that crawl in the dust. 25 The sword will make people childless outside, and terror will do so inside; they will destroy both the young man and the virgin, the infant and the gray-haired man. 26 “I said, ‘I want to cut them in pieces. I want to make people forget they ever existed. 27 But I fear the reaction of their enemies, for their adversaries would misunderstand and say, “Our power is great, and the Lord has not done all this!”’ 28 They are a nation devoid of wisdom, and there is no understanding among them. 29 I wish that they were wise and could understand this, and that they could comprehend what will happen to them.” 30 How can one man chase a thousand of them, and two pursue ten thousand,⁠ unless their Rock had delivered them up—and the Lord had handed them over? 31 For our enemies’ rock is not like our Rock, as even our enemies concede. 32 For their vine is from the stock of Sodom, and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes contain venom; their clusters of grapes are bitter. 33 Their wine is snakes’ poison, the deadly venom of cobras. 34 “Is this not stored up with me?” says the Lord, “Is it not sealed up in my storehouses? 35 I will get revenge and pay them back at the time their foot slips;⁠ for the day of their disaster is near, and the impending judgment is rushing upon them!” 36 The Lord will judge his people, and will have compassion on his servants;62⁠ when he sees that their power has disappeared, and that no one is left, whether confined or set free. 37 He will say, “Where are their gods, the rock in whom they sought security,⁠ 38 who ate the best of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise and help you; let them be your refuge! 39 “See now that I, indeed I, am he!” says the Lord, “and there is no other god besides me.⁠ I kill and give life, I smash and I heal,⁠ and none can resist my power. 40 For I raise up my hand to heaven, and say, ‘As surely as I live forever,⁠ 41 I will sharpen my lightning-like sword, and my hand will grasp hold of the weapon of judgment; I will execute vengeance on my foes, and repay those who hate me! 42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will devour flesh—the blood of the slaughtered and captured, the chief of the enemy’s leaders.’”⁠ 43 Cry out, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge his servants’ blood;⁠ he will take vengeance against his enemies,⁠ and make atonement for his land and people.⁠ 44 Then Moses went with Joshua son of Nun and recited all the words of this song to the people. 45 When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel⁠ 46 he said to them, “Keep in mind all the words I am solemnly proclaiming to you today; you must command your children to observe carefully all the words of this law. 47 For this is no idle word for you—it is your life! By this word you will live a long time in the land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess.” 48 Then the Lord said to Moses that same day, 49 “Go up to this Abarim hill country, to Mount Nebo (which is in the land of Moab opposite Jericho), and look at the land of Canaan that I am giving to the Israelites as a possession. 50 You will die on the mountain that you ascend and join your deceased ancestors, just as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and joined his deceased ancestors, 51 for both of you rebelled against me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin when you did not show me proper respect among the Israelites. 52 You will see the land before you, but you will not enter the land that I am giving to the Israelites.”

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 32:13 and Amos 4:13

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Deuteronomy 32 describes Israel being lifted to the heights of the earth, cosmological language that points to elevated places seen as sources of blessing. Amos 4 uses the same image differently, portraying God walking across the heights of the earth.

Passages

Deuteronomy 32:13

Hebrew Bible
11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, so the Lord spread out his wings and took him, he lifted him up on his pinions. 12 The Lord alone was guiding him, no foreign god was with him. 13 He enabled him to travel over the heights of the earth, and he ate of the produce of the fields. He provided honey for him from the cliffs, and olive oil from the hardest of rocks, 14 butter from the herd and milk from the flock, along with the fat of lambs, rams and goats of Bashan, along with the best of the kernels of wheat; and from the juice of grapes you drank wine. 15 But Jeshurun became fat and kicked; you got fat, thick, and stuffed! Then he deserted the God who made him, and treated the Rock who saved him with contempt.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Amos 4:13

Hebrew Bible
11 “I overthrew some of you the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the flames. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 12 “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel. Because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel!” 13 For here he is! He formed the mountains and created the wind. He reveals his plans to men. He turns the dawn into darkness and marches on the heights of the earth. The Lord God of Heaven’s Armies is his name!
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Amos

References

"... The open-air altar shrine, called a bamah, is known through several books of the Biblical canon—but none more so than the Book of Kings, where they play a prominent role in assessing the performance of a king. Often referred to as “high places” in translations of the Bible, bamot were worship sites that usually contained an altar. A general understanding about the bamah and how it functioned can be gained by using evidence from the Biblical text as well as archaeology. The term bamah can mean back, hill, height, ridge or cultic high place. In the Biblical text it is used to mean “the back of one’s enemies” (Deuteronomy 33:29), “heights” (Deuteronomy 32:13; Isaiah 58:14; Micah 1:3; Amos 4:13; Haggai 3:19; Psalm 18:34), “back of clouds” (Isaiah 14:14) or “waves of sea” (Job 9:8). Because of this, eminent scholar Roland de Vaux said, “The idea which the word expresses, therefore, is something which stands out in relief from its background, but the idea of a mountain or hill is not contained in the word itself.” This could explain why this word is used even though some of the shrines were not located on hills. The Ugaritic and Akkadian cognate usually means an animal’s back or trunk. The Akkadian can also mean land that is elevated. In the text of the Bible they can be found on hills (2 Kings 16:4; 17:9-10; 1 Kings 11:7), towns (1 Kings 13:32; 2 Kings 17:29; 23:5) and at the gate of Jerusalem (2 Kings 23:8). Ezra 6:3 says they were in the ravines and valleys. The position of a bamah in the valley can also be seen in Jeremiah 7:31; 32:35 ..."
Ellen White, High Places, Altars and the Bamah (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2023), 1–6.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Deuteronomy 32:13 and Amos 4:13

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