Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Chapter Thirty-two
This chapter is the swan-song of Moses, now on the point of death. For Moses, foreseeing by God’s inspiration that the Hebrews after his death would fall away from God, and therefore be gravely punished by Him, first calls heaven and earth as witnesses, and commends the clemency, justice and perfection of God. Secondly, verse 6, he rebukes their future perverse generation, recalling to them so many benefits of God towards them, and that after them, dissolved in luxury, they turned from God to idols. Thirdly, verse 28, he sings that on account of their sins, God being angry and withdrawing His protection from them, they are delivered over to various evils and plagues. Fourthly, verse 35, he promises the mercy of God, and vengeance upon their enemies, when, admonished by His scourges, they shall have returned to their senses.
Wherefore the Hebrews call this canticle the summary or compendium of the whole law. For it makes mention of the magnificence of God, the creation of heaven and earth, the one God to be worshipped, the deluge, the division of tongues and lands, the election of the people of Israel, the benefits bestowed on them by God in the desert, the resurrection of the dead, etc.
1. Hear, O ye heavens, the things I speak: let the earth give ear to the words of my mouth. 2. Let my doctrine gather as the rain, let my speech distil as the dew, as a shower upon the herb, and as drops upon the grass. 3. Because I will invoke the name of the Lord: give ye magnificence to our God. 4. The works of God are perfect, and all his ways are judgments: God is faithful and without any iniquity, he is just and right. 5. They have sinned against him, and are none of his children in their filth: they are a wicked and perverse generation. 6. Is this the return thou makest to the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he thy father, that hath possessed thee, and made thee, and created thee? 7. Remember the days of old, think upon every generation: ask thy father, and he will declare to thee: thy elders, and they will tell thee. 8. When the Most High divided the nations: when he separated the sons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel. 9. But the Lord’s portion is his people: Jacob the lot of his inheritance. 10. He found him in a desert land, in a place of horror, and of vast wilderness: he led him about, and taught him: and he kept him as the apple of his eye. 11. As the eagle enticing her young to fly, and hovering over them, he spread his wings, and hath taken him and carried him on his shoulders. 12. The Lord alone was his leader: and there was no strange god with him. 13. He set him upon high land, that he might eat the fruits of the fields, that he might suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hardest stone. 14. Butter of the herd, and milk of the sheep, with the fat of lambs, and of the rams of the breed of Basan: and goats with the marrow of wheat, and might drink the purest blood of the grape. 15. The beloved grew fat, and kicked: grown fat, and gross, and thick, he forsook God who made him, and departed from God his saviour. 16. They provoked him by strange gods, and stirred him up to anger with abominations. 17. They sacrificed to devils and not to God: to gods whom they knew not: that were newly come up, whom their fathers worshipped not. 18. Thou hast forsaken the God that begot thee, and hast forgotten the Lord that created thee. 19. The Lord saw, and was moved to wrath: because his own sons and daughters provoked him. 20. And he said: I will hide my face from them, and will consider what their last end shall be: for it is a perverse generation, and unfaithful children. 21. They have provoked me with that which was not God, and have angered me with their vanities: and I will provoke them with that which is not a people, and will vex them with a foolish nation. 22. A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell: and shall devour the earth with her increase, and shall burn the foundations of the mountains. 23. I will heap evils upon them, and will spend my arrows among them. 24. They shall be consumed with famine, and birds shall devour them with a most bitter bite: I will send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the fury of creatures that trail upon the ground, and of serpents. 25. Without shall the sword lay them waste, and fear within, the young man and the virgin, the suckling child with the man in years. 26. I said: Where are they? I will make the memory of them to cease from among men. 27. But for the wrath of the enemies I have deferred, lest their enemies should be proud, and should say: Our own high hand, and not the Lord, hath done all these things. 28. They are a nation void of counsel and without wisdom. 29. O that they would be wise and would understand, and would provide for their last end! 30. How should one pursue after a thousand, and two chase ten thousand? Was it not because their God had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up? 31. For our God is not as their gods: and our enemies are judges. 32. Their vine is of the vineyard of Sodom, and of the suburbs of Gomorrha: their grape is the grape of gall, and their cluster most bitter. 33. Their wine is the gall of dragons, and the venom of asps, which is incurable. 34. Are not these things stored up with me, and sealed up among my treasures? 35. Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide: the day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to come. 36. The Lord will judge his people, and have mercy on his servants: he shall see that their hand is weakened, and they that were shut up have failed, and the rest are consumed. 37. And he shall say: Where are their gods, in whom they trusted? 38. Of whose victims they ate the fat, and drank the wine of their drink offerings: let them arise and help you, and protect you in your distress. 39. See ye that I alone am, and there is no other God besides me: I will kill and I will make to live: I will strike, and I will heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. 40. I will lift up my hand to heaven, and I will say: I live for ever. 41. If I shall whet my sword as the lightning, and my hand take hold on judgment: I will render vengeance to my enemies, and repay them that hate me. 42. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh, of the blood of the slain and of the captivity, of the bared head of the enemies. 43. Praise his people, ye nations for he will revenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to their enemies, and will be merciful to the land of his people. 44. Moses therefore came and spoke all the words of this canticle in the ears of the people, he and Josue the son of Nun. 45. And he ended all these words, speaking to all Israel, 46. And he said to them: Set your hearts on all the words which I testify to you this day, that you may command your children to observe them, and to do and fulfil all things that are written in this law: 47. For they are not commanded you in vain, but that every one might live in them: which when you do, you shall continue a long time in the land, to which you are going over the Jordan to possess it. 48. And the Lord spoke to Moses the same day, saying: 49. Go up into this mountain Abarim, that is, of passages, into mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, over against Jericho: and view the land of Chanaan, which I will deliver to the children of Israel for a possession, and die on the mountain. 50. Which when thou shalt have gone up, thou shalt be gathered to thy people, as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered to his people: 51. Because you have transgressed against me in the midst of the children of Israel, at the waters of contradiction in Cades of the desert of Sin: and you did not sanctify me among the children of Israel. 52. Thou shalt see the land before thee, and shalt not go into it, which I will give to the children of Israel.
1. HEAR, O YE HEAVENS, THE THINGS I SPEAK.—The Hebrews: Ye who live, and ever obey, be witnesses to me, for I speak; as if to say: You, heaven and earth, eternal witnesses of those things which I am about to say and foretell to the Hebrews. See what was said chap. iv, verse 26.
Tropologically, by the heavens is signified the order of superiors, by the earth the common people of subjects, says St. Gregory, book II of the Morals, xxvi; as if to say: Hear, ye superiors, hear, ye subjects, the law and the threats of your God.
2. LET MY DOCTRINE GATHER AS THE RAIN.—The Hebrew is, let my doctrine drop as rain, namely into the hearts of the Hebrews; the “in” is therefore put for “like”: “into rain,” that is, like rain. For the Hebrews often use the preposition beth for the caph of likeness; as if to say: O that my doctrine be not void, vain and useless in you, but bear fruit, and do what rain and dew do in fields and herbs, when they make them fruitful! Hence the Septuagint render, let my doctrine be awaited like rain; and the Chaldee, let my doctrine be sweet as rain, let my word be received as dew.