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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 32:18 and Jeremiah 2:27

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Jeremiah draws on language from Deuteronomy’s Song of Moses, where Israel forgets the God who gave them birth. In both texts, maternal imagery conveys abandonment, but Jeremiah adapts it to criticize Judah’s worship of tree and stone symbols.

Passages

Deuteronomy 32:18

Hebrew Bible
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.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Jeremiah 2:27

Hebrew Bible
25 Do not chase after other gods until your shoes wear out and your throats become dry. But you say, ‘It is useless for you to try and stop me because I love those foreign gods and want to pursue them!’ 26 Just as a thief has to suffer dishonor when he is caught, so the people of Israel will suffer dishonor for what they have done. So will their kings and officials, their priests and their prophets. 27 They say to a wooden idol, ‘You are my father.’ They say to a stone image, ‘You gave birth to me.’ Yes, they have turned away from me instead of turning to me. Yet when they are in trouble, they say, ‘Come and save us!’ 28 But where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them save you when you are in trouble. The sad fact is that you have as many gods as you have towns, Judah. 29 Why do you try to refute me? All of you have rebelled against me,” says the Lord.
500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jeremiah

References

"... the asherah was perceived as the goddess’s symbol, not only by its critics, but also by Israelite worshipers. These views are historically problematic, however. The myth in Jeremiah 2:27 is not attributed to a goddess, as in Canaanite religion, but to a symbol in the cult of Yahweh. That such maternal language was appropriated to Yahweh is evident from Deuteronomy 32:18, discussed in the following section. It is possible, therefore, that the symbol named in this verse did not refer to Asherah. Yet there is a further difficulty for assuming that Asherah is described in Jeremiah 2:27. The larger context of this verse, Jeremiah 2:23-28, names Baal also as an object of opprobrium, and perhaps it is Baal and Asherah who are the objects of attack in this verse. Elsewhere in the Deuteronomistic History, especially in 1 Kings 18:19, the juxtaposition of Baal and Asherah may reflect the substitution of Asherah for Astarte. The same replacement may be involved in Jeremiah 2:27. Or, perhaps this verse reflects a historical connection made secondarily between Baal and Asherah in Jeremiah’s own time. As a result of the complex problems that Jeremiah 2:27 presents, the precise divine referents of the symbols of tree and stone in this verse are difficult to establish; indeed, many scholars deny that there are any divine referents ..."
Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd ed., The Biblical Resource Series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 135.

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 32:18 and Jeremiah 2:27

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