Deuteronomy - Lesson 33

Our subject of discussion this session is the long poem in Deuteronomy chapter 32, which I call Israel’s National Anthem. Let’s remind ourselves where we are in the book. We have worked our way through the four addresses of Moses. The intermediate stage, the narrative of chapter 31, which introduces us to the song of, usually called the Song of Moses, we’ll talk about that in a moment. But the song, which is in here, framed by a narrative introduction and a narrative conclusion. But this is where we are now. 

You can see we are approaching the end of the book. The worship service is coming to the closing hymn. It’s a very logically presented book here, not just in terms of covenant procedure, but also in terms of shall we say, homiletical rhetoric. 

We talked about this before. Chapter 31 dealt with three issues. There’s the appointment of Joshua as Moses’ successor, the writing and preservation of the Torah, but there is a third element that he introduces in verses 16 to 22, that is what I call the national anthem, Israel’s national anthem. Since we are dealing specifically with the song, our concern in that outline is expressly the (c.) elements, the national anthem. 

Verses 16 through 22, and 30, provide background to the revelation of the song, so let’s hear the word of the Lord. “And Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Look, you are…” Well, there’s that hinnê again, “You’re about to,” it signals a new moment, “You are about to lie down with your fathers. “Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land they’re entering, and they will forsake Me and break My covenant that I have made with them. And then My anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide My face from them and they will be devoured. And many evils and troubles will come upon them so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’ And I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil that they have done, because they have turned to other gods.” That’s verse 18. 

Verse 19, “Now, therefore, write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths,” that means teach it, have them memorize it, “that this song may be a witness for Me against the people of Israel. For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise Me and break My covenant. And when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of the offspring). For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give.” 

Verse 22, “So Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it to the people of Israel.” 

And then, after reporting Moses’ pessimistic disposition toward Israel and her future apostasy, the narrator adds in verse 30, “Then Moses spoke the words of the song until they were finished, in the ears of all the assembly of Israel.” And that sets the stage then, for the citation of the song. 

Well, we need to talk, first of all, about the genre. It’s interesting that in Hebrew we have no word for poetry. We have words like chronicles, writings, documents, genealogies, proverbs, songs, psalms, laments, songs of praise, but no word for prose or no word for poetry, the big categories that we are so stuck on. 

But this is clearly poetry as we have come to understand Hebrew poetry, and our understanding is not derived from dictionary definitions. It’s simply from looking at the evidence and drawing our conclusion and giving a label based on the evidence. So, it’s not in the dictionary, but this is what people have called this kind of literature. 

What are the features of Israelite poetry versus prose? First, you’ll have assonantal plays on sound, repeating words or repeating sounds, the ‘s’ sounds. 'Ašrê hā’îš, ‘blessed is the man who.’ It’s all over this kind of thing. 

Meter and rhythm. Though this is not as important as the poetry with which some of us grew up. Nowadays, poetry is free verse; there’s no meter, no rhythm. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to me to have any structure, but then it’s a new definition of poetry. 

In Hebrew, meter and rhythm are often there, so that a lament poem is typically 3:2 rhythm. Bah bah bah, bah bah. Bah bah bah, bah bah. Bah bah bah. That’s in lament. But it’s not always there. This is not secure. 

But Hebrew poetry depends upon the harmony of ideas rather than harmony of sounds. In that sense, we would say English definitions of poetry, as it was when we grew up, were rhyme, and that’s important. That’s phony. Of course, phony has to do with sound, but now we’re using that word in another way. It’s fake poetry. Hebrew poetry is real poetry because it’s not so superficial. It’s the harmony of ideas and sounds. And it’s creative and effective in breaking many of the rules we understand. 

For a long time, we thought that Hebrew poetry had unique grammatical and syntactical rules. Well, it’s not so much that they have unique rules, but they apply them in different proportions and in different ways. In poetry, you have the increased frequency of hapax legomena, words that appear nowhere else in Scripture. Rare words; other forms of free expressions. This is why the Book of Job is one of the hardest ones to read in all of the Bible because it’s poetry except for the prose beginning and the prose end. That’s easy Hebrew but the middle part is difficult. There are so many rare words, strange words that appear nowhere else in Scripture, and you have to guess about the meanings. 

When I teach Hebrew to students, Deuteronomy offers good classical standard, biblical Hebrew, and it’s got repeated vocabulary. For the most part, the language isn’t difficult, but you’ve worked your way through chapter 31 and you reach chapter 32 and you hit a brick wall. It’s absolutely a brick wall because you’re in a strange new world. There are incomplete sentences, there are strange expressions. Poetry rises to a different register where the poet needs a wide range of expressions to express the ideas. 

And so, in parallelism, for instance, you will have in the first line, a very common word, or a set of common words. Let’s see, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the Earth shows forth his handiwork.” That’s ABC, ABC. In the first line, typically you’ve got the common words, but there are some concepts where we don’t have many synonyms that are in common use. And for the second line they’ll often reach back into the dictionaries or ancient literature, and bring back a word because they need to construct this parallelism. So, it’s very common if you’re reading poetry.

When I was doing my commentary on Judges (what took me about three years to write), I think I spent more time on chapter 5, Debra’s Song, more time on chapter 5 than the rest of chapter. Well, it starts, that episode starts, in chapter 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, that one chapter. And even then, I wasn’t sure I got it. So, I was very relieved when one of my doctoral students wanted to write a dissertation on that chapter. It was a fine piece; now it all makes sense. I wish I had had that sooner. 

Figurative language. Prose tends to be, what you see is what you get. Now you can have lots of figurative language in prose, but it’s the proportions. Figurative. Genesis 1 is an elevated prose. There is actually not much figurative language in Genesis 1. A lot of people think that’s poetry; chapter 2 is prose. The differences are not that obvious here. 

There are semantic and other forms of parallelism. I’ve already given an illustration of this. 

Impressionistic portraiture. If prose tells us what actually happened, poetry tells us how I feel about what happened. So that Judges 5 is Deborah’s song about what had happened the previous day. Chapter 4 is a prose account. If all you had was the song, you could scarcely reconstruct the events. And it’s the same with Exodus 14 - is the crossing of the Red Sea narrative. Exodus 15, the Song of the Sea. If all we had the song was the Song of the Sea. You couldn’t reconstruct what happened. The horses and the soldiers of Israel gurgled down like a rock into the bottom of the sea. Well, what happened here? So, it’s impressionistic rather than photographic portraiture.

But that raises the question, what shall we call this song? 31:30 suggests it is a song, the song, and in fact, this song. Actually, I think it’s somewhere called the Song of Songs. The book Song of Songs is called šîr haššîrîm, the song of songs, which means ‘the greatest song.’ Well, in Israelite tradition, this song is often interpreted as the most exciting song. 

According to long standing tradition, Deuteronomy 32 is called The Song of Moses. Let me go to my Bible and see what they have here. They probably have that, chapter 32. There it is! The song of Moses. Really? On what grounds would we do that? Of course, the expression comes from Revelation 15:3, “And I saw what appeared to be the sea of glass mingled with fire, and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the ‘Song of Moses,’ the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, ‘Great and amazing are your deeds, O, Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the Nations!’” There you have a reference to the Song of Moses. 

But why did they attach that label to this poem? It seems, in my view, quite unfortunate. For several reasons. The Song of Moses in Revelation may just as well refer to Exodus 15 because it’s about salvation, it’s about deliverance, it’s about the paradigmatic salvation of the Israelites from Egypt as a picture of the salvation of that which the Lamb provides. So, I think what the author of Revelation is thinking of is actually Exodus 15. I think that’s the Song of Moses. We call it the Song of Miriam because she sang it. But does that mean she composed it? 

In any case, Revelation 15:3 represents a collage of Old Testament motifs and texts with only faint allusions, actually either to Exodus 15, and certainly, very faint, even less clear, to Deuteronomy 32. This seems very arbitrary to me, to make this link. 

Second, within the context of Deuteronomy 31-32, it is misleading to label this song as the Song of Moses because he was neither its composer nor its subject. He didn’t write it, and it’s not about him. Moses was merely a conduit for its communication. The Lord spoke all the words of this song. If there’s any place in Scripture where we have something like dictation, a dictation theory of inspiration, this one is it. Here the text tells us the Lord spoke to them all the words of this song. It’s not Moses’ composition. The narrative introduction suggests the lyrics were dictated by Yahweh to Moses and Joshua in the tent of meeting that Moses then recited them to all the people, and he taught it to them. Is the teacher the poet? I mean, that’s plagiarism. That’s claiming credit for somebody else. And so, I think it’s actually off track. 

In the immediate context, the speaker represented by the first person, in Deuteronomy 32, verses 1 and 2, “For I proclaim the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to the God.” That person would have been Moses, but this song is composed in such a way that in the future, when you sing this song, whoever sings it proclaims the word of the Lord. So, he is the one. In the original assembly, he was the speaker, but the next generation is whoever is singing this in front of the congregation or however it was used.

The song is not presented as the composition of Moses, but it’s the speech of Yahweh and crafted in such a way that it speaks for the voices and with the voices of generations of Israelites into the distant future. The words of the opening stanza represent anyone who sings this song in the present or in the future. But thereafter, after those first couple of verses, the singer disappears and the first person is reserved for Yahweh Himself. There are lots of ‘I’s’ in here. It’s always God. If we insist on labeling the song by its composer or its subject rather than by its genre, we should call it ‘The Song of Yahweh.’ 

There’s no doubt this is a song intended for the people to sing, in a sense. I think it’s actually their national anthem, in which case it would be the oldest national anthem known to humankind. What does an anthem do? 

I mean, at the Olympic Games. We’ve lived in this country now since 1983. But I confess that when in the Winter Olympics, the Canadians are playing the Americans, blood flows thicker than water, I’m sorry. As great as your ‘miracle on ice’ was, for us, that was a disappointment. It should have been us. But that was a great moment for American hockey. And so, you know. 

When they sing the national anthem for the ones who win the gold medals, this is a symbol of who these people are, their identity. “O, Canada.” Or “O, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light?” (We used to sing that proudly. We’re struggling with that these days for one reason or another. Which tells you, tells us, about the struggle about what does it mean to be American? There are a lot of people for whom it doesn’t represent what they feel.) And so that’s why all this tension in this country. And so, we are all asking, what is the solution? 

Why can we call this Israel’s national anthem? I have four or five reasons. 

One, Moses was told to teach it to the sons of Israel. This is canonical from the beginning. It is their song. 

Second, it was to be taught, not to an individual or to a class of music students but to the people with whom the Lord had made His covenant, the whole nation. It’s the national song. 

Third, the song was not to be forgotten from the lips of the descendants of the people standing before Moses. Look at verse 21 of chapter 31, “When many evils and troubles come upon them, this song will testify before them as a witness (for)” and there’s the parenthetical… “(It shall not be forgotten from the lips of their descendants.)” This is not just a faddish new idea to make the top of the charts for a brief moment in history. This is for Israel in perpetuity, and it has immediate canonical authority. 

Four, in Moses’ concluding appeal, he emphasized the importance of the song; the well-being of the people in the future will depend on remembering its words. Look at verse 46. “Take to your heart all the words I’m warning you today which you shall command your sons to observe carefully, even the words of this Torah.” Well, what’s this Torah? The song. Now he applies that word. Not just to the covenantal stipulations and all of that business or to his sermons on the covenant. Now, this song is given Torah status. Well, so I call it the national. In any other context, we say this is the national anthem to be sung in perpetuity because it declares to the world what it means to be an Israelite. That sets us up for the song itself. 

Notice the occasion of the song: 

• Moses, you’re about to die.
• The people will become apostate.
• The Lord will respond with fury.
• Troubles and evils will overcome.
• The people will be open to instruction. 

Really? Hopefully they will. And from where does the instruction come? The amazing thing is that the substitute for Moses in their midst is not Joshua. We would have expected: Moses, you’re about to die; Joshua becomes the second Moses. Joshua does not become a second Moses. Joshua is a military leader. Yes, he is the leader of the people in a certain sense, and he functions pastorally in the end. But that’s what all leaders do. They assume responsibility for the people that they are called to lead, whether you’re officially reverend or not. So, if anything, he looks like a general. He’s not a king. He never called him a king. But the Lord tells him to treat the Torah like kings are supposed to treat the Torah. So, he’s somehow in that category. 

But the point is, Moses will not be replaced with another person. The voice of Moses will not become somebody else’s voice. The voice of Moses is preserved in the Torah, and the theology of Moses is presented in the song that Moses teaches to the people. 

There’s a guy in Australia has done a dissertation; I was outside reader for it. He did it at the University of Cheltenham under Gordon McConville. He did his dissertation on this song. Critical scholars always say this song is an erratic, somebody else wrote it at a different time. It has originally nothing to do with the Book of Deuteronomy and somebody just stuck it in here; an editor did, and in a sense I would say, and messed up the book. 

But he, this guy argued that when you look at the song carefully, actually, you find that the themes are over and over and over again. What we have heard in prose now converted into song. And so, it’s not a new theology here. It is the old theology put into memorable form. So that, I mean, when the people take the land and they settle, they’re going to be settling in their responsive territories, all the way from Mount Hermon in the north to Be'er Sheva and the river Egypt in the south, the Negev. You can’t have one person like Moses holding you together. The glue. It’s a settled condition. That could work so long as we’re a camp on the march, on the move. But we’re not going to be a camp. That’s not our destiny. 

And so, the substitute for a leader who embodies the Torah is a song which the people can memorize and sing, memorize easily. It’s only 43 verses. You can memorize easily, and everywhere you go, it can be ringing in your ears. You get up in the morning, in the shower and this song is in your ears. You’re out in the field and this is in your ears or you’re milking the cows, and while you’re milking your cows, you’re singing this song. It can go with you wherever you go. You are what you sing. That’s the assumption. You are what you sing. You can tell the identity of a people by the songs they sing. There’s a profound theology of music in this text. The importance of good music. 

“Now therefore, write this song and teach it to the people. Put it in their mouths that it may be a witness.” And the interesting thing is what this song gives us is Israel’s history before it happens. Which is why a lot of people say that, despite its archaic language, (which puts it in the second millennium BC), some very clever poet wrote it very late and made it look like it’s old. After the events. So, it’s ex aventu. But no, he casts it as a future course of Israelite history. 

As a witness, it does two things. It testifies to the faithfulness of Yahweh. This whole song is about the faithfulness of Yahweh, and you see that already in the opening intro. “The Rock, the Rock. His work is perfect, all His ways are just, a God of faithfulness or without injustice, righteous and upright is He.” I mean, in that one verse, we’ve got themes for an eight-week series of sermons. Theologically profound and dense. Now we’re in the world of Paul when he writes his dense theological stuff. 

But it also testifies to the unfaithfulness of Israel. It’s a witness to God who is the same yesterday, today and forever and in Ezekiel a dozen times - “I am Yahweh, I have spoken, I act in accordance with My word, always, I’m always true to My word.” 

On the other end, there’s Israel. And the Lord says, “Moses, you’re about to die. Tomorrow they’ll go off track.” It’s not even as if I’m worried that tomorrow they could go off track. Early on in chapter 5, He had said, “If only they had this heart like they expressed at Mount Sinai; ‘Moses, you go and you talk to God.’” If only that heart were there forever. It’s as if He’s already anticipating the future. Of course, God knows the future from the beginning. And so… 

But it tells the story. It’s a very complex composition, incorporating speech within speech within speech. It’s hard to know how to represent this, but in this chart, I have tried to do that. You’ve got three or four levels of discourse. The singer sings this one. But then here’s a second level, these are the second. Oh, there is a black frame all around it. You can see it. 

The whole thing is one song. First level, the whole thing. But then within that, verses 4, and 8 and 9, you’ve got a song within a song. 

Then you’ve got a second level, 32:20-35. But within this second song, you’ve got three or four songs within a song, which is within the song. 

And then at the end of this, verses 37 to 42, you’ve got three levels there, right? It’s a very complicated piece. And try and wrestle with a structure and a diagram, and diagram this text. It’s very, very difficult. 

But how would these people have used it? Scholars always try to be creative in reconstructing what people are doing with what is being written. I’m not sure. But I think the simple answer I give you here is memorized by all the people that could have been on the lips whenever they lived, wherever they lived and worked and celebrated to the far corners. I don’t think it was written to be sung in church. I think it was composed to be sung everywhere you go, not just in formal settings. 

I’m sure it may have been sung, at covenantal renewal setting. Maybe even at the end, remember, they’re supposed to read this whole Torah at the end, every seven years at the Festival of Booths? I am sure had they ever done it, (and we have no record that they did it the way they were supposed to until the Book of Ezra there, and he says, “Oh, it’s a Festival of Booths and we’re going to keep it”). I am sure that God had in mind at the Festival of Booths when you’ve heard the Torah, we will all sing together the national anthem. And it will remind us in song form who we are, what God has done for us, what God expects of us, and how our miserable story will end. It’s interesting. 

Some suggest this is a liturgical song. When they gathered for national celebrations, it could have been presented by singers before the people as a source of musical drama. So that you have different people doing this song within the song. That could be very effective. 

In fact, I have imagined a liturgical format for doing this. If I were ever preaching a series on the song on the Song of Yahweh here, the anthem, the first Sunday morning, I would have somebody do this. I’ve proposed this kind of thing for the Book of Ruth and other places, but here I think we have a main speaker. Well, this identifies the speaker, but – 

• The introduction - the leader of the service.
• The creedal affirmation - the congregation says together.
• Summary declaration of the indictment - the leader of the service.
• Call to remember grace - leader of the service.
• Your recitation of Yahweh’s grace - the men. (There’s a reason for that in the text)
• Declaration of the indictment of the people - leader of the service.
• And then you have these other speeches - the priest or a cultic prophet maybe did it over there, and we could have another person designated that, and you could go through the whole thing and be a magnificent presentation.

I’ve never seen it done and I’ve never had occasion to preach a series on this song. It’s well worth an entire series. Start it out this way so that at the front end the people get an idea of what are people doing things with words. Speech, act theory. It’s a fascinating prospect. 

Of course, it ends on a kind of problematic textual note. Verse 43 is very difficult, we’ll come back to it after we’ve read the song. 

But we have three different versions, which are quite different. What we have in the Hebrew text, Masoretic, is only four lines. What you have in Qumran is six lines, what you have in the Septuagint is eight lines. Three different versions. And of course, we’re left to struggle with which of these could have been original or does it matter? But we’ll come back to this when we get to the end of the song. And I’ve tried to represent that here. 

Nothing substantive is lost if we go with the shortest version. But you can see right off the bat what the Septuagint adds. Here you have simply, “Celebrate, O nations, with His people. See the blood of His servants He will avenge; and take vengeance on His enemies. He will atone for His land and His people.” That’s a brilliant ending. But it’s very sketchy. It’s very sketchy. 

So, Qumran comes along and adds two lines, “Celebrate O heavens with Him and bow down to Him all gods.” Well, what’s he done? This is poetry. And he says, We’re going to say something similar in two different lines. Only now it’s not just the heavens, but he’s imagining a polytheistic world. Anything you imagine to be a god, come celebrate with us. 

Gods, by definition, Elohim, are residents of the heavenly world. They’re not necessarily the God. Sons of God are sometimes called simply Elohim. In Psalm 81, I think it is. 

And here you have, “See the blood of His sons He will avenge.” That’s exactly the same. “He will pay back those who hate Him and atone for the land and His people.” 

Notice what he’s done at the front and the end? He’s completed the parallelism. 

But look at this. “Celebrate O heavens with Him and bow down to Him, all sons of God.” Angelic beings in this case. “Celebrate O nations with Him. Let the angels of God (angelos), which is the expression for sons of God “And let the angels strengthen themselves. See the blood of His sons He will avenge. He will pay back those who hate Him and atone.” 

Here it’s with Qumran. But he adds a whole two lines that are brand new here and fleshes it. 

And interestingly, when Paul quotes from this passage in Romans, I’ve forgotten the reference, he quotes from the Septuagint insertion and calls it Scripture, which is really interesting. Does that mean it was the original? And it’s dropped out? Or does it mean that to Paul the Septuagint translation is the determinative scripture? It’s a great problem. Which reading is best? It’s a complicated thing, and I’m not going to go into that. 

At the moment, and it’s in soft lead pencil, I prefer the longest. I know it’s counter intuitive. In textual criticism, the rule is the shorter is probably the original because the tendency is for people to clarify by expanding. Well, there are times where that usually, I think, that’s usually the case. But my mentor always used to say, “Never exclude the evidence of a single exception to the rule.” And there are actually a few others. Even Emanuel Tov talks about a few cases in which he argues that the longer reading is the original and something’s dropped out or whatever. So, at the moment, I prefer the longer. But it’s a 50%, 51% confidence. It’s in soft lead pencil. 

As I was working through this, I came to the first round and the second round, I was convinced that Qumran had it right; six lines is the best. But I don’t usually let later use of an early text become determinative. I don’t usually do that. But there are other reasons to support why that could go. And so, he may have. 

So, let’s look at the structure of the song. You have the exordium: a highfalutin word which is appropriate for a highfalutin song. That’s why I do that. The medium is the message. And this is not ordinary prose. It’s not street language. People don’t talk this way. That’s verses 1 to 4. 

Then a recollection: A call to acknowledge the imperfections of Yahweh’s people, 5 to 18. 

Stanza I: a thesis statement, verses 5 to 6. 

Stanza II: A call to remember Yahweh’s grace, 7 to 14. 

Stanza III: Trampling underfoot the grace of God. This is a poetic advance history of Israel. 

Then we’ve got the confession: A call to recognize Yahweh’s justice, 19-35 

Stanza I: Yahweh’s justice in dealing with His people.
Stanza II: Yahweh’s justice in dealing with their enemies. 

And then, the gospel: A call to treasure Yahweh’s compassion, 36 to 42. 

And finally, the coda. The coda is to the ending what the exordium is to the beginning – a call to celebrate the Lord’s deliverance, verse 43. 

Well. Songs like this were composed to be heard in one piece. Not taken like we do with a rose flower, take the petals all apart and examine each petal, but to hear the whole thing. And so that’s what I would like to offer you in what I hope is a measure of what I call expository reading. So that, in the course of the hearing, we get the point. When I read the text, I always tell the people, “Put your Bibles down, close your Bibles.” Listen, the Scriptures were written to be heard in community. And that’s how we need to learn to hear it. 

So, I will pause at the breaks to help you catch the transitions. But between the headings, I will just carry on. 

So, we begin with the exordium. Hear the word of the Lord. 

“Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, let the earth hear the words of my mouth. 
May my teaching drop as the rain, 
and my speech distill as the dew, 
like gentle rain upon the tender grass, 
and like showers upon the herb. 

See, I will proclaim the name of Yahweh; ascribe greatness to our God! 

‘The Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice. 
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, righteous and upright is He.’” 

Now the recollection: a call to acknowledge the imperfections of Yahweh’s people, beginning with a thesis statement. 

“They have dealt corruptly with Him; 
they are no longer His children 
because they are blemished; 
they are crooked and a twisted generation. 

Do you thus repay Yahweh, 
you foolish and senseless people? 
Is not He your father who created you, 
He who made you and established you? 

Remember the days of old; 
consider the years of many generations; 
Ask your father, and he will declare to you, 
your elders, and they will tell you.

When Elyon gave to the nations their grants (of land), 
when He divided humankind, 
See, He fixed the borders of the peoples 
according to the number of the sons of God. 

Yes. Yahweh’s portion is His people, 
Jacob is His allotted heritage. 

He found him in a desert land, 
and in the howling wastes of the wilderness; 
He encircled him, He cared for him, 
He kept him as the apple of His eye. 

Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, 
that flutters over its young, 
spreading out its wings, catching them, 
baring them on his pinions, 

Yahweh alone guided him, 
no foreign god was with him. 

He made him ride high on the high places of the land, 
and he ate the produce of the field, 
He suckled him with honey out of the rock, 
and oil out of the flinty rock. 

Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,
with fat of lambs, rams of Bashan and goats, 
and with the very finest of the wheat 
and the blood of grapes – 
you drank foaming wine. 

But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; 
you grew fat, you grew stout, and grew sleek; 
then he forsook God who made him 
and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation. 

They stirred Him to jealousy with strange gods; 
with abominations they provoked Him to anger. 

They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, 
to gods they had never known, 
to new gods that had come recently,
whom your fathers had never dreaded. 

Of the Rock that bore you, you were unmindful and you forgot the God who gave you birth.” 

Transition: a call to recognize Yahweh’s justice 

“Yahweh saw it and spurned them, 
because of the provocation of His sons and His daughters. 

And He said, 
I will hide My face from them;
I will see what their end will be, 
Look, they are a perverse generation, 
children in whom is no faithfulness. 

They have made Me jealous with what is no god; 
they have provoked Me to anger with their idols. 

I will make them jealous with those who are no people; 
I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. 

See, a fire is kindled in My nose, 
it burns to the depths of Sheol, 
it devours the earth and its increase, 
and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. 

And I will heap upon them disasters; 
My arrows I will spend on them; 

They shall be wasted with hunger, 
and devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence; 
I will send the teeth of beasts against them, 
with the venom of things that crawl in the dust. 

Outdoors the sword shall bereave, 
indoors terror, 
for young man and woman alike, 
the nursing child with the man of gray hairs. 

I would have said, 
I will cut them to pieces; 
I will wipe them from human history, 

had I not feared provocation by the enemy, 
lest the adversary should misunderstand, 
lest they should say, (our adversaries),
‘Our hand is triumphant, 
it was not Yahweh who did all this.’ 

Look, they are a nation void of counsel, 
and in them there is no understanding. 

If they were wise, they would understand this; 
they would discern their latter end! 

How could one have chased a thousand, 
and two have put ten thousand to flight, 
unless they are Rock had sold them,
and Yahweh had given them up? 

Look, their rock is not as our Rock; 
our enemies are by themselves. 

Look, their vine comes from the vine of Sodom 
and from the fields of Gomorrah;
Their grapes are grapes of poison; 
their clusters are bitter; 

their wine is the poison of serpents 
and the cruel venom of asps. 

Is not this laid up in store with me, 
sealed up in my treasuries? 

Vengeance is Mine, and recompense, 
for the time when their foot shall slip; 
See, the day of their calamity is at hand,
their doom comes swiftly.” 

A call to treasure Yahweh’s compassion. 

“See, Yahweh will vindicate His people 
and have compassion on His servants, 
when He sees that their power is gone 
there is none remaining, 
neither ruler nor helper. 

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

who the fat of their sacrifices ate 
and the wine of their drink offerings drank? 
Let them rise up and help you; 
let them be your protection! 

Pay attention, now. 
Look, I, even I, am He 
and there is no god beside Me; 
I kill and I make alive; 
I wound and I heal; 
and there is none that can deliver out of My hand. 

See, I lift up My hand to heaven and I say, 
As I live forever!” (or, “By my eternal life”) 

“If I sharpen My flashing sword 
and My hand takes hold on judgment, 
I will take vengeance on My adversaries 
and will repay those who hate Me. 

I will make My arrows drunk with blood, 
and My sword shall devour flesh - 
with a blood of the slain and the captives, 
from the long-haired heads of the enemy.” 

And then the coda: 

“Celebrate, O nations, with His people. 
See, He will avenge the blood of His servants; 
He will take vengeance on His enemies 
and make atonement for His land and people. 

Celebrate, O heavens with Him; 
bow down to Him, all gods. 
See, He avenges the blood of His children 
and takes vengeance on His adversaries. 
He repays those who hate Him 
and cleanses His people’s land.” 

This is the word of the Lord. 

And I gave you two versions of that last one. 

But it is an amazing, an amazing text. But it is Israel’s history told in advance. The amazing thing is Israel is the product of His grace alone. “I found you in the desert, in the wilderness.” You had nothing going for you until I showed up. 

And then, of course, it’s, Israel grew fat and they forgot the God who created them and they went off after the other idols. 

And then He brings in the other nations to do His dirty work for Him, to judge them. But He takes it out on the nations. This is a problem, isn’t it? How can God use Nebuchadnezzar to be His agent of judgment and then He takes it out on Nebuchadnezzar after he’s done His work? Well, it never excuses them for being beyond the pale of God’s. 

But, of course, it concludes Israel is back. Celebrate. And it’s a call to the universe, not just Israel. “Celebrate, O heavens with them, all sons of God.” bə·nê ’elōhim or bə·nê ēlîm in Hebrew this would be. At this point it’s, I think, huios theos. But, “celebrate O nations with its people and let the angels of God strengthen themselves.” 

It ends on a glorious note: He will atone for the land. And now the grammar’s really difficult. Literally, He will atone for His land, His people. There’s no conjunction there. And we don’t know exactly what it is. Some have, He will atone for the land of His people, I think that’s what Septuagint has here. Or, the Hebrew has, He will atone for his land, His people.

But the important thing here is the triangle. You can’t talk about Israel’s restoration without talking about the land. And this is typical of all First Testament anticipations of renewal. It’s this image that the prophets pick up on. They unpack this last one in their pictures of the vision, in their vision of the restoration of God’s people. To me, this is a powerful text. 

And of course, Israel is a microcosm of humanity. And this is our human story. Where were Adam and Eve apart from the work of God? A piece of dirt. And He, by a special act of creation, appointed them His vice regents. And what did they do with it? They blew it. And with their demise, the whole realm went into demise. Israel is intentionally portrayed in Deuteronomy as a miniature Eden. Israel is humanity in miniature; Canaan is the world in miniature. And so, this turns out actually to be the human story. The story of Israel is paradigmatic (Chris Wright’s word for the story of humanity). In Israel, all the world is blessed. 

So, that is Deuteronomy 32. An amazing text that is a beautiful passage. And the poetry…I mean, no one can do it justice in translation because everything is far more complicated. The point of translation is to make a confusing text clear. But really what we should do when we’re doing true translations, we pull our hair out just the way the original audience would have pulled hair. What do you mean here? The ambiguity is everywhere. 

There are a couple of little details we could talk about. Did you notice? Well, yeah, we have time for a few lessons. 

One, past experience of the favor of God is no guarantee that I shall remain faithful to Him.

Two, for the Lord’s people, prosperity may be perilous to their spiritual health. That’s the warning on cigarette boxes. 

Three, songs have a powerful influence in the life of a person and a community. 

We are what we sing. And that is the last one – we are what we sing. 

I want to make one more comment on the name, Jeshurun. We talked briefly about Jeshurun. This name happens only five times in Scripture, three times in Deuteronomy, and I think twice in Isaiah, I mentioned it earlier. Jeshurun, that’s God’s pet name for people with whom we have a special relationship. We don’t call them simply what everybody else calls them. We have an epithet for them. 

And this is my interpretation of this one. You have it in Isaiah 44 in a picture of the restoration. Uh, let’s see. It’s on the left-hand side of the page. Yes, 44. “But now listen, O Jacob, my servant, Israel whom I have chosen. Thus says Yahweh who made you and formed you from the womb, who will help you; ‘Do not fear, O, Jacob, My servant; And you, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. For I will pour out water on the thirsty land, streams on the dry ground; I will pour out My Spirit on your offspring,’” Here’s one of those liquid metaphors of the Spirit of God. “‘Pour My Spirit on you, My blessing on your descendants. They will spring up among the grass like poplars by streams of water. This one will say, ‘I am the Lord’s’; that one will call on the name of Jacob. Another will write on his hand, ‘Belonging to Yahweh.’” 

Oh, now we understand this, it’s the brand El, meaning belonging to, with the name of Yahweh on his hand. Why would you do that? We really think of inscribing, emblazing, or branding on the forehead or wherever. But this is on the hand so that when you meet a stranger, and you encounter, or a friend and you greet them, you extend the hand. And they see that on there, oh, ‘Belonging to Yahweh.’ And of course, it forces you to remember - I better act like it or I bear the Name in vain. 

This is a great text because it brings together all kinds of Deuteronomic ideas. But the one, Jeshurun, and I said the other day, this is a passive participle of ‘to make straight.’ And I think it has to do with a yoke. You’ve had the yoke of slavery on you. You are my chosen people. I have taken the yoke off from you and given you a new yoke that is easy, the burden is light. It’s a privilege. It’s not a duty. It’s not a burden. It’s a calling, not an imposition. “Take My yoke.” This is His pet word for Israel, Jeshurun, ‘My straightened one,’ or ‘the straightened one.’ Assuming, of course, I am. 

That expression of lifting the yoke off the neck happens only twice in Scripture. It’s in Ezekiel 34 at the end of the verse where he talks about the covenant of peace that God makes, “I will lift the yoke from the neck.” And in Leviticus 26, the blessings where it involves lifting the yoke and causing you to walk upright. This is not moral straightness at this point. ‘My straight ones.’ No, it’s a physical metaphor. It’s a physical image. You’re not bent down anymore with a load. But you’re walking upright because the Lord is the One who has rescued you from the slave house of Egypt.

So, Isaiah 44, very Deuteronomic. But then, as Doug Moo says, “Block sees Deuteronomy everywhere.” I really do. Yeah, because it is the foundation of all the rest of Scripture. I’m convinced. 

There are places where - Exodus, Leviticus - priestly stuff echoes more clearly, especially in a priestly text like Ezekiel, he’s a priest. But Jeremiah is also a priest from Anathoth. In Jeremiah, it’s not Leviticus that’s driving him, it’s Deuteronomy. It is Deuteronomy. But Isaiah, Hosea is very Deuteronomic. Amos is Deuteronomic. Malachi is all the way through. And I come to the New Testament, Sermon on the Mount and the Lord’s Prayer, whatever. That is so Moses. 

Student: Within your triangle with the land at one corner, is the land in the First Testament, a foreshadowing of something in the New Testament? Are we meant to just see it in a new way? 

Dr. Block: Uh, the answer on that one is probably yes, it is a foreshadowing. But again, you don’t hear me use the word foreshadow much because if it’s foreshadowing something, the original people should be anticipating, there should be a clue that its significance is future. Unless your understanding of foreshadow is that we can only recognize it after the event, and then we have an ‘aha’ moment, wow, I get it now. And there are lots of places like that. But then I don’t think that is pointing there. It’s providing an image, the significance of which we discover later in the grand scheme of redemption. This is my crystal-tellic reading of everything. 

So, is it a foreshadowing? I think at this point we could use that word not as a foreshadowing of spiritual realities. Here’s where I’m probably being heretical again. I think it’s a foreshadowing of eschatological realities. It is a reminder that our destiny is not heaven. I don’t expect to spend eternity in heaven. We were created to be earthlings. And I think this is a foreshadowing of the new heavens and the new earth. It keeps in mind the image of Eden as a telos for humanity. That’s how I go with this one. Canaan is a microscopic eschatological, it’s microscopic of an eschatological reality. 

Student: I think of the Garden of Eden as being like that. We’re looking for a new garden, looking for a new promised land. 

Dr. Block: Yeah. It will encompass the world. Yeah, see, it’s very… Somewhere along, not in this set, but somewhere along the line. And if you do a map of Genesis 2, Eden is a small portion. Eden is not a garden. The garden is in Eden which is in the east. So, you’ve got circles here of reality. You’ve got the world in which is Eden, in which is the garden. 

And I think the mission for Adam and Eve, for humanity, was to extend the boundaries of Eden until it gets to the point where it covers the earth. That’s why, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” there’s only one species of animals for whom that’s given. Other animals, they’re in their territory. You don’t have elephants now in these parts. We used to, but not (in prehistoric times). 

But it is, I think, the commission of Adam - they are to guard the garden. Keep and serve the garden. Why would you need to guard it, šāmar? Why would you need to guard the garden? Because apparently there are threatening forces in God’s good world. There are threatening forces. 

And I mean, there are lots of people who think that the law of tooth and claw may well reign outside the garden. But what is to happen is as the human population multiplies, they eventually take over the whole world and it all becomes a garden. This is the capital of a nation. 

I don’t interpret Eden as a temple. I used to and when Greg Beall was working on his book on the temple, we had lots of conversations and I was with him and I changed my mind. I did another look. I took another look at some of these texts that Gordon Wenham adduced, which got us going in this direction. And I said, every one of them is equally well, and in some of them, much better interpreted as a royal rather than priestly issue. 

And so, it’s clearly, they are kings and queens put on Earth to govern God’s realm on His behalf, vice regents. It’s not priestly. You don’t need a priest in a perfect world. The priesthood, Levitical priesthood, temple is God’s provision for an estranged world. So, I don’t think we need a temple here. We don’t need a temple until sin comes in, and that is God’s answer. 

And this is why in the temple design, it is a replica of the heavenly temple (Hebrews). I think when Moses was on the mountain, the Lord opened the windows of heaven and he saw something of the true heavenly reality. Including Christ? I don’t know, never talks about it. But there are hints that the Lord tells him. Takes him on the mount, He shows him the heavens, and he tells him to build a replica temple. It’s a replica of the heavenly throne room of God. And so, the Ark of the Covenant is an earthly throne, which is God’s symbolic presence. It makes the resources of heaven available to the needs of a fallen world. And so, prosperity for Israel is to go out from the temple. 

But the other side of this is the temple is also Edenic in its design with pomegranates and palm trees and the cherubs, whatever. This is Edenic. And I think it’s a reminder to the Israelites when they come to the temple that on the one hand, this is a picture of God’s heavenly temple. But on the other hand, it’s a picture of our destiny. And it keeps the dream alive. It should have. So that’s how I go with that one. It’s both.