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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 32:8 and Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 24

Hebrew Bible · Rabbinic

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Summary

Rabbinic tradition, such as in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, echoes Deuteronomy 32 by describing the division of nations under seventy patron gods, but often changes “gods” to “angels” similarly to the Greek Septuagint translation of Genesis.

Passages

Deuteronomy 32:8

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

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 24

Rabbinic
And Abraham, son of Terah, passed by, and saw them building the city and the tower, and he cursed them in the name of his God, as it is said, "Swallow up, O Lord, divide their language" (Ps. 55:9). But they rejected his words, like a stone cast upon the ground. Is it not a fact that every choice and good stone is only put at the corner of a building? and with reference to this, the text says, "The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner" (Ps. 118:22). Rabbi Simeon said: The Holy One, blessed be He, called to the seventy angels, who surround the throne of His glory, and He said to them: Come, let us descend and let us confuse the seventy nations and the seventy languages. Whence (do we know) that the Holy One, blessed be He, spake to them? Because it is said, "Go to, let us go down" (Gen. 11:7). "I will go down" is not written, but "Go to, let us go down." And they cast lots among them. Because it is said, "When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance" (Deut. 32:8). The lot of the Holy One, blessed be He, fell upon Abraham and upon his seed, as it is said, "For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance" (Deut. 32:9). The Holy One, blessed be He, said: The portion and lot which have fallen to Me, My soul liveth thereby, as it is said, "The lots have fallen unto me in pleasures; yea, I have a goodly heritage" (Ps. 16:6). The Holy One, blessed be He, descended with the seventy angels, who surround the throne of His glory, and they confused their speech into seventy nations and seventy languages. Whence do we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, descended? Because it is said, "And the Lord God came down to see the city and the tower" (Gen. 11:5). This was the second descent.
630–1030 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer

References

"... In another place, the Bible suggested that Israel had been singled out as God's future possession even earlier, at the time when humanity was first being divided up into different nations and peoples ... This seemed to mean that God had decided to take personal charge over Israel, whereas the fortunes of other peoples were given over to heavenly subordinates, angels (the 'sons of God') or other powers ... Indeed, according to another text, Israel was singled out even earlier, at the time of the creation of the world ..."
James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 408–409.

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 32:8 and Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 24

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