The Bible: With Sources Revealed a New View into the Five Books of Moses

^I Listen, skies, so I may speak,

and let the earth hear what my mouth says.

² Let my teaching come down like showers; let my saying emerge like dew,

like raindrops on plants

and like rainfalls on herbs.

³ When I call YHWH’s name,

avow our God’s greatness.

⁴ The Rock: His work is unblemished,

for all His ways are judgment.

A God of trust, and without injustice,

He’s virtuous and right.

⁵ It corrupted at Him—not His children, their flaw—

a crooked and twisted generation.

⁶ Is it to YHWH that you repay like this?!

Foolish people and unwise!

Isn’t He your father, who created you,

He who made you and reared you?

⁷ Remember the days of old.

Grasp the years through generations.

Ask your father, and he’ll tell you,

your elders, and they’ll say to you:

⁸ When the Highest gave nations legacies, when He dispersed humankind,

He set the peoples’ borders

to the number of the children of Israel.

⁹ For YHWH’s portion is His people.

Jacob is the share of His legacy.

¹⁰ He found it in a wilderness land

and in a formless place, a howling desert. He surrounded it.

He attended to it.

He guarded it, like the pupil of his eye.

¹¹ As an eagle stirs its nest,

hovers over its young, spreads its wings, takes it,

lifts it on its pinion,

¹² YHWH, alone, led it,

and no foreign god with Him.

¹³ He had it ride over earth’s high places and fed it the field’s bounties

and had it suck honey from a rock

and oil from a flint rock

¹⁴ and curds of cattle and milk of the flock

and fat of lambs

and Bashan rams and he-goats

with fat of innards of wheat

—and from grape’s blood you drank wine.

¹⁵ And Jeshurun got fat and kicked

—you got fat, you got wide, you got stuffed!—

and it left God who made it

and took its saving rock for granted.

¹⁶ They made Him jealous with outsiders.

With offensive things they made him angry.

¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons, a non-god,

gods they hadn’t known;

new ones, they came of late;

your fathers hadn’t been acquainted with them.

¹⁸ The rock that fathered you, you ignored,

and you forgot God who bore you.

¹⁹ And YHWH saw and rejected

from His sons’ and His daughters’ angering.

²⁰ And He said, “Let me hide my face from them;

I’ll see what their end will be.

For they’re a generation of overthrows,

children with no trust in them.

²¹ They made me jealous with no-god.

They provoked me with their nothings.

And I: I’ll make them jealous with no-people.

I’ll make them angry with a foolish nation.

²² For fire has ignited in my anger

and burned to Sheol at bottom

and consumed land and its crop

and set the mountains’ foundations ablaze.

²³ I’ll mass bad things over them.

I’ll exhaust my arrows on them,

²⁴ sapped by hunger and devoured by flame.

And bitter destruction

and animals’ teeth I’ll let loose at them

with venom of serpents of the dust.

²⁵ Outside: a sword will bereave, and inside: terror,

both young man and virgin, suckling with aged man.

²⁶ I’d say, ‘I’ll erase them.

I’ll make their memory cease from mankind,’

²⁷ if I didn’t fear the enemy’s anger, in case their foes would misread,

in case they’d say, ‘Our hand was high,

and it wasn’t YHWH who did all this!’

²⁸ For they’re a nation void of counsel,

and there’s no understanding in them.

²⁹ If they were wise they’d comprehend this;

they’d grasp their future.

³⁰ How could one pursue a thousand

and two chase ten thousand

if not that their rock had sold them,

that YHWH had turned them over?”

³¹ For their rock is not like our rock,

though our enemies are the judges.

³² For their vine is from Sodom’s vine

and from Gomorrah’s fields.

Their grapes are poison grapes.

They have bitter clusters.

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

³⁴ “Isn’t it stored with me,

sealed in my treasuries?

³⁵ Vengeance and recompense are mine, for the time their foot will slip;

for the day of their ordeal is close

and comes fast: things prepared for them.”

³⁶ For YHWH will judge His people

and regret about his servants

when He’ll see that their strength is gone

and there’s none: held back or left alone.

³⁷ And He’ll say, “Where are their gods,

the rock in whom they sought refuge,

³⁸ who would eat the fat of their sacrifices, would drink the wine of their libations?

Let them get up and help you!

Let that be a shelter over you.

³⁹ See now that I, I am He,

and there is no god with me.

I cause death and give life.

I’ve pierced, and I’ll heal.

And there’s no deliverer from my hand,

⁴⁰ when I raise my hand to the skies,

and I say, ‘As I live forever,

⁴¹ if I whet the lightning of my sword,

and my hand takes hold of judgment,

I’ll give back vengeance to my foes

and pay back those who hate me.

⁴² I’ll make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will eat flesh

from the blood of the slain and captured,

from the head of loose hair of the enemy.’”

⁴³ Nations: cheer His people!

For He’ll requite His servants’

blood and give back vengeance to His foes

and make atonement for His land, His people.

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