Deuteronomy

Chapter 32

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Leningrad Codex, through the Open Scriptures Westminster Leningrad Codex. The written consonants are printed. A Masoretic reading is footnoted when it differs. No Dead Sea reading was substituted unless it was read from a fragment. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions are witnesses, not the default.

A dotted word is a harder one. Point at it, or tap it, for a short definition.

1Heavens, listen, and I will speak. Let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

2Let my teaching drop as rain. Let my speech flow as dew, as light showers on the green, and as heavy showers on the grass.

Notes (1)

Translation
Leqach is teaching. Imrah is speech. Se’irim are light showers. Revivim are heavy showers.

3For I will call on the name of Yahweh. Give greatness to our God.

4The Rock, his work is whole, for all his ways are judgment. A God of faithfulness, and no injustice. He is right and upright.

Notes (1)

Translation
Tsur is the Rock. Tamim is whole. El emunah is a God of faithfulness.

5They dealt ruin toward him. They are not his children. The defect is theirs. A generation crooked and twisted.

Notes (1)

Translation
Shichet lo lo banav mumam is compressed. The words are printed in order: ruin toward him, not his children, their defect. No words are added to smooth the line.

6Is this how you repay Yahweh, a people foolish and not wise? Is he not your father, who acquired you? He made you, and he established you.

7Remember the days of old. Consider the years of generation after generation. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will say it to you.

8When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the borders of the peoples by the number of the sons of Israel.

Notes (1)

Text
Elyon is the Most High. Bene Yisrael is the sons of Israel, as the Leningrad copy writes it. This draft does not replace that wording with a reading that was not read off a fragment.

9For Yahweh’s share is his people. Jacob is the measuring line of his inheritance.

Notes (1)

Translation
Chevel nachalato is the measuring line of his inheritance.

10He found him in a wilderness land, in the howling emptiness of the wasteland. He surrounded him, he attended to him, he guarded him as the pupil of his eye.

Notes (1)

Translation
Tohu yelel yeshimon is the howling emptiness of the wasteland. Ishon is the pupil of the eye.

11As an eagle stirs its nest, hovers over its young, spreads its wings, takes him, and carries him on its pinions,

12Yahweh alone led him, and no foreign god was with him.

13He made him ride on the heights of the land, and he ate the produce of the field. He nursed him with honey from a crag and oil from the flint of a rock,

Notes (1)

Text
The written consonants are במותי, with a yod. The Masoretic reading is במתי, the heights of. Heights of the land is printed. The written yod is not turned into the word my. No other wording is substituted.

14curds of the herd and milk of the flock, with fat of lambs and of rams, the sons of Bashan, and of goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat. And the blood of the grape you shall drink as fermenting wine.

Notes (1)

Translation
Chelev is fat. Kelayot chittah are kidneys of wheat, the richest of the grain. Chemer is fermenting wine.

15Yeshurun grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, you grew thick, you grew sleek. He forsook the God who made him and treated the Rock of his salvation as a fool.

Notes (1)

Translation
Yeshurun is a name for Israel in this song. The line does not explain the name. Naval is to treat as a fool.

16They made him jealous with strangers. With abominations they provoked him.

17They sacrificed to demons, not God, gods they had not known, new ones, lately come, whom your fathers had not dreaded.

Notes (1)

Translation
Shedim are demons. Lo eloah is not God. Lo se’arum is they had not dreaded them.

18You neglected the Rock who bore you, and you forgot the God who brought you forth in labor.

19Yahweh saw and spurned them, from vexation at his sons and his daughters.

20He said, I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end is. For they are a generation of overturnings, children in whom there is no faithfulness.

21They made me jealous with what is not a god. They provoked me with their empty things. I will make them jealous with what is not a people. With a foolish nation I will provoke them.

22For a fire is kindled in my anger, and it burns as far as lowest Sheol. It eats the earth and its produce, and it sets the foundations of the mountains ablaze.

23I will heap evils on them. I will use up my arrows on them.

24Wasted by hunger, eaten by flame, and bitter destruction, I will send the tooth of beasts against them, with the venom of things that crawl in the dust.

Notes (1)

Translation
Reshef is flame. Qetev meriri is bitter destruction. The line does not give them personal names.

25Outside the sword shall bereave, and inside the rooms, terror, both the young man and the virgin, the nursing child with the gray-haired man.

26I said, I would cut them off. I would make their memory cease from mankind.

Notes (1)

Translation
Af’ehem is a rare verb. It is printed as I would cut them off. The line does not define the stroke.

27If I did not dread the enemy’s vexation, lest their foes misread it, lest they say, Our hand is high, and Yahweh did not do all this.

28For they are a nation lost of counsel, and there is no understanding in them.

29If they were wise, they would consider this. They would discern their end.

30How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them and Yahweh had handed them over?

31For their rock is not like our Rock, and our enemies are the ones who judge.

Notes (1)

Translation
Pelilim are judges. The line says our enemies are the ones who judge.

32For their vine is from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poison grapes, clusters bitter for them.

33Their wine is the venom of serpents, and the cruel poison of cobras.

Notes (1)

Translation
Tanninim are serpents. Petanim are cobras. Rosh is poison.

34Is this not stored up with me, sealed in my storehouses?

35Mine is vengeance and repayment, for the time when their foot slips. For the day of their disaster is near, and what is prepared for them hurries.

Notes (1)

Translation
Li naqam ve-shillem is mine is vengeance and repayment. Eid is disaster. Atidot are the things prepared.

36For Yahweh will judge his people, and he will relent over his servants, when he sees that the hand is gone and there is nothing left, the one shut in or the one left free.

Notes (1)

Translation
Atzur ve-azuv is the one shut in and the one left free. The pair is printed as those two, not as a later social class.

37He will say, Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge,

38who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise and help you. Let them be a shelter over you.

39See now that I, I am he, and there is no god beside me. I put to death and I make alive. I have struck and I will heal, and there is no one who rescues from my hand.

40For I lift my hand to the heavens, and I say, I live forever.

41If I sharpen the lightning of my sword, and my hand takes hold of judgment, I will return vengeance to my foes, and those who hate me I will repay.

42I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall eat flesh, with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the long-haired heads of the enemy.

Notes (1)

Translation
Par’ot oyev is the long hair of the enemy’s heads.

43Sing, nations, his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will return vengeance to his foes and make atonement for his land, his people.

Notes (1)

Text
The Leningrad line is these clauses. No longer ending was read from a fragment, so none is added.

44Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Hoshea son of Nun.

Notes (1)

Text
This verse writes Hoshea. The verses around it write Joshua. The written name is printed.

45Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel.

46He said to them, Set your heart on all the words that I am testifying among you today, so that you command your children to keep to do all the words of this instruction.

47For it is not an empty word for you. It is your life. By this word you shall lengthen days on the soil that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.

48Yahweh spoke to Moses on that very day, saying,

49Go up this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, facing Jericho, and see the land of Canaan that I am giving to the sons of Israel as a possession.

Notes (1)

Translation
Har ha-avarim is the mountain of the Abarim. Yericho is Jericho.

50You shall die on the mountain that you are going up, and you shall be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people,

51because you broke faith with me among the sons of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, because you did not treat me as set apart among the sons of Israel.

Notes (1)

Translation
Me’altem is you broke faith, a breach. Qiddashtem is you treated me as set apart. The place is Meribah-kadesh, as written.

52For you shall see the land from opposite, but you shall not go there, into the land that I am giving to the sons of Israel.