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32Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;
   let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
² May my teaching drop like the rain,
   my speech condense like the dew;
like gentle rain on grass,
   like showers on new growth.
³ For I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
   ascribe greatness to our God!

⁴ The Rock, his work is perfect,
   and all his ways are just.
A faithful God, without deceit,
   just and upright is he;
⁵ yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him,^*
   a perverse and crooked generation.
⁶ Do you thus repay the Lord,
   O foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your father, who created you,
   who made you and established you?
⁷ Remember the days of old,
   consider the years long past;
ask your father, and he will inform you;
   your elders, and they will tell you.
⁸ When the Most High^* apportioned the nations,
   when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
   according to the number of the gods;^*
9 the Lord’s own portion was his people,
   Jacob his allotted share.

¹⁰ He sustained^* him in a desert land,
   in a howling wilderness waste;
he shielded him, cared for him,
   guarded him as the apple of his eye.
¹¹ As an eagle stirs up its nest,
   and hovers over its young;
as it spreads its wings, takes them up,
   and bears them aloft on its pinions,
¹² the Lord alone guided him;
   no foreign god was with him.
¹³ He set him upon the heights of the land,
   and fed him with^* produce of the field;
he nursed him with honey from the crags,
   with oil from flinty rock;
¹⁴ curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,
   with fat of lambs and rams;
Bashan bulls and goats,
   together with the choicest wheat—
   you drank fine wine from the blood of grapes.
¹⁵ Jacob ate his fill;^*
   Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked.
   You grew fat, bloated, and gorged!
He abandoned God who made him,
   and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.
¹⁶ They made him jealous with strange gods,
   with abhorrent things they provoked him.
¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons, not God,
   to deities they had never known,
to new ones recently arrived,
   whom your ancestors had not feared.
¹⁸ You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you;^*
   you forgot the God who gave you birth.

¹⁹ The Lord saw it, and was jealous;^*
   he spurned^* his sons and daughters.
²⁰ He said: I will hide my face from them,
   I will see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
   children in whom there is no faithfulness.
²¹ They made me jealous with what is no god,
   provoked me with their idols.
So I will make them jealous with what is no people,
   provoke them with a foolish nation.
²² For a fire is kindled by my anger,
   and burns to the depths of Sheol;
it devours the earth and its increase,
   and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.
²³ I will heap disasters upon them,
   spend my arrows against them:
²⁴ wasting hunger,
   burning consumption,
   bitter pestilence.
The teeth of beasts I will send against them,
   with venom of things crawling in the dust.
²⁵ In the street the sword shall bereave,
   and in the chambers terror,
for young man and woman alike,
   nursing child and old grey head.
²⁶ I thought to scatter them^*
   and blot out the memory of them from humankind;
²⁷ but I feared provocation by the enemy,
   for their adversaries might misunderstand
and say, ‘Our hand is triumphant;
   it was not the Lord who did all this.’

²⁸ They are a nation void of sense;
   there is no understanding in them.
²⁹ If they were wise, they would understand this;
   they would discern what the end would be.
³⁰ How could one have routed a thousand,
   and two put a myriad to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
   the Lord had given them up?
³¹ Indeed their rock is not like our Rock;
   our enemies are fools.^*
32 Their vine comes from the vine-stock of Sodom,
   from the vineyards of Gomorrah;
their grapes are grapes of poison,
   their clusters are bitter;
³³ their wine is the poison of serpents,
   the cruel venom of asps.

³⁴ Is not this laid up in store with me,
   sealed up in my treasuries?
³⁵ Vengeance is mine, and recompense,
   for the time when their foot shall slip;
because the day of their calamity is at hand,
   their doom comes swiftly.

³⁶ Indeed the Lord will vindicate his people,
   have compassion on his servants,
when he sees that their power is gone,
   neither bond nor free remaining.
³⁷ Then he will say: Where are their gods,
   the rock in which they took refuge,
³⁸ who ate the fat of their sacrifices,
   and drank the wine of their libations?
Let them rise up and help you,
   let them be your protection!

³⁹ See now that I, even I, am he;
   there is no god besides me.
I kill and I make alive;
   I wound and I heal;
   and no one can deliver from my hand.
⁴⁰ For I lift up my hand to heaven,
   and swear: As I live for ever,
⁴¹ when I whet my flashing sword,
   and my hand takes hold on judgement;
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 slain and the captives,
   from the long-haired enemy.

⁴³ Praise, O heavens,^* his people,
   worship him, all you gods!^*
For he will avenge the blood of his children,^*
   and take vengeance on his adversaries;
he will repay those who hate him,^*
   and cleanse the land for his people.^*