1 “Listen, heavens, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. 2 My teaching shall drop as the rain, my speech shall flow as the dew, as gentle rain on grass, and as showers on the plants. 3 For I will invoke the name of Shema, and declare the greatness of our God. 4 The rock’s work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without wrongdoing, he is just and right. 5 They have acted corruptly; the children with defects [are] not his, a perverse and crooked generation. 6 Is this how you repay Shema, foolish and unwise people? Look, he is your father who possesses you! He has made you, and established you. 7 Remember the days long past, consider the years of all generations. Ask your father, and he will inform you; your elders, and they will tell you. 8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the children of men, he set the boundaries of peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. 9 For Shema’s portion is his people Jacob; the lot of his inheritance is Israel. 10 He strengthened him in the desert, and set him in praise. He encircled him, and he adopted him as a son, and he guarded him as [one guards] the pupil of his eye. 11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, he spreads out his wings and takes them. He carries them on his wing. 12 Shema alone led him, and there was no foreign god with him. 13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, he fed him [with] the yield of the field. He made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flint rock. 14 Butter from the herd, and milk of the flock, with butter from lambs and rams, herds of Bashan and goats, with the finest of the wheat, and you drank wine from the blood of grapes. 15 Jacob ate and was satisfied, Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, you grew thick, you became beautiful. Then he abandoned God who made him, and they spurned the rock of his salvation. 16 They stirred him to jealousy with foreign [gods], and with the detestable things they provoked him to anger. 17 They sacrificed to demons, which were not gods, gods that they had not known, [to] new ones that appeared recently, whom your fathers did not fear. 18 You disdained the rock who fathered you, and have forgotten the God who praised you. 19 And Shema saw [it], and became angry, because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters. 20 And he said, ‘I will hide my face from them, and I will see what their end shall be, for they are a generation of perversity, sons in whom there is no faithfulness. 21 They have angered me with what is no god; they have enraged me with their idols. So I will anger them with those who are no people, I will enrage them with a foolish nation. 22 For a fire is lit by my anger, and it burns to the lowest Sheol. It devours the earth with its produce. It sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. 23 I will gather evils on them. And I will spend my arrows on them. 24 From this hunger their food is flame. I will send fierce predators and the teeth of wild animals against them, with the venom of creatures that crawl in the dust. 25 The sword shall cause loss of loved ones outside, and there shall be terror in the rooms. [Destroying] both young man and virgin and nursing [child] with the old man. 26 I said, ‘they provoke me to anger, I would erase their memory from among men,’ 27 if it were not that I feared the provocation of my enemy, so that our adversaries would not boast and say, ‘Our hands prevailed, Shema has not done all this.’ 28 For they are a nation without its counsel, there is no understanding in them. 29 They are not wise, and [do not] understand this, and [do not] consider their final end. 30 How should one chase a thousand, and two make ten thousand flee, unless their rock had sold them, and Shema had handed them over? 31 For their rock is not as our rock, [still] our enemies are hopeful. 32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the grapevine of Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of poison, and their clusters are bitter. 33 Their wine is poison of snakes, hostile venom of vipers. 34 Look, it is stored with me, sealed up in my storehouses! 35 For the day of vengeance and repayment, at the time when their foot shall slip.⁠a For the day of their calamity is near, and their doom comes swiftly. 36 For Shema will vindicate his people, and have compassion for his servants, when he sees that [their] power is gone, and no one remains, slave or free. 37 And they will say, ‘Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge, 38 which ate the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offering? Let them rise up and help you, let them be your protection.’ 39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god besides me. I kill, and I give life; I wound, and I heal. And no one can rescue anyone from my hand. 40 For I lift up my hand to the heaven, and say, ‘As I live forever, 41 if I sharpen my glittering sword, and my hand takes hold of judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries, and will repay those who hate me. 42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; with the blood of the killed and the captives, from the head of the enemy’s rioters.’ 43 Nations, praise his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will take vengeance on his adversaries, and will make atonement for the land of his people.”

44 And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun. 45 And when Moses finished speaking these words to all Israel, 46 he said to them: “Take to heart all the words which I testify to you today, which you shall command your children to observe and to do, all the words of this law. 47 For this is no empty matter for you, because it is your life, and through this thing you shall live long in the land, which you cross the Jordan to possess.”

48 And Shema spoke to Moses on that very day, saying: 49 “Go up this Mount Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, which is opposite Jericho, and look at the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel for a possession. 50 And die on the mountain which you ascend, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died in Mount Hor, and was gathered to his people, 51 because you acted unfaithfully against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribath Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, because you did not acknowledge me as holy among the children of Israel. 52 For you shall see the land before you, but you shall not go into the land which I give the children of Israel.”