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31When Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, ²he said to them: “I am now one hundred twenty years old. I am no longer able to get about, and the Lord has told me, ‘You shall not cross over this Jordan.’ ³The Lord your God himself will cross over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua also will cross over before you, as the Lord promised. ⁴The Lord will do to them as he did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when he destroyed them. ⁵The Lord will give them over to you and you shall deal with them in full accord with the command that I have given to you. ⁶Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.” ⁷Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel: “Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. ⁸It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”

⁹Then Moses wrote down this law, and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. ¹⁰Moses commanded them: “Every seventh year, in the scheduled year of remission, during the festival of booths, ¹¹when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. ¹²Assemble the people—men, women, and children, as well as the aliens residing in your towns—so that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God and to observe diligently all the words of this law, ¹³and so that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.”

¹⁴The Lord said to Moses, “Your time to die is near; call Joshua and present yourselves in the tent of meeting, so that I may commission him.” So Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves in the tent of meeting, ¹⁵and the Lord appeared at the tent in a pillar of cloud; the pillar of cloud stood at the entrance to the tent. ¹⁶The Lord said to Moses, “Soon you will lie down with your ancestors. Then this people will begin to prostitute themselves to the foreign gods in their midst, the gods of the land into which they are going; they will forsake me, breaking my covenant that I have made with them. ¹⁷My anger will be kindled against them in that day. I will forsake them and hide my face from them; they will become easy prey, and many terrible troubles will come upon them. In that day they will say, ‘Have not these troubles come upon us because our God is not in our midst?’ ¹⁸On that day I will surely hide my face on account of all the evil they have done by turning to other gods. ¹⁹Now therefore write this song, and teach it to the Israelites; put it in their mouths, in order that this song may be a witness for me against the Israelites. ²⁰For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I promised on oath to their ancestors, and they have eaten their fill and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, despising me and breaking my covenant. ²¹And when many terrible troubles come upon them, this song will confront them as a witness, because it will not be lost from the mouths of their descendants. For I know what they are inclined to do even now, before I have brought them into the land that I promised them on oath.”

²²That very day Moses wrote this song and taught it to the Israelites. ²³Then the Lord commissioned Joshua son of Nun and said, “Be strong and bold, for you shall bring the Israelites into the land that I promised them; I will be with you.” ²⁴When Moses had finished writing down in a book the words of this law to the very end, ²⁵Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, ²⁶“Take this book of the law and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God; let it remain there as a witness against you. ²⁷For I know well how rebellious and stubborn you are. If you already have been so rebellious toward the Lord while I am still alive among you, how much more after my death! ²⁸Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officials, so that I may recite these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to witness against them. ²⁹For I know that after my death you will surely act corruptly, turning aside from the way that I have commanded you. In time to come trouble will befall you, because you will do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger through the work of your hands.” ³⁰Then Moses recited the words of this song, to the very end, in the hearing of the whole assembly of Israel:

32Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; let the earth hear the words of my mouth. ²May my teaching drop like the rain, my speech condense like the dew; like gentle rain on grass, like showers on new growth. ³For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God! ⁴The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he; ⁵yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him, a perverse and crooked generation. ⁶Do you thus repay the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?

⁷Remember the days of old, consider the years long past; ask your father, and he will inform you; your elders, and they will tell you. ⁸When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; ⁹the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share. ¹⁰He 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. ¹¹As 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, ¹²the Lord alone guided him; no foreign god was with him. ¹³He set him atop 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; ¹⁴curds 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.

¹⁵Jacob 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. ¹⁶They made him jealous with strange gods, with abhorrent things they provoked him. ¹⁷They sacrificed to demons, not God, to deities they had never known, to new ones recently arrived, whom your ancestors had not feared. ¹⁸You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.

¹⁹The Lord saw it, and was jealous he spurned his sons and daughters. ²⁰He 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. ²¹They 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. ²²For 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. ²³I will heap disasters upon them, spend my arrows against them: ²⁴wasting hunger, burning consumption, bitter pestilence. The teeth of beasts I will send against them, with venom of things crawling in the dust. ²⁵In the street the sword shall bereave, and in the chambers terror, for young man and woman alike, nursing child and old gray head.

²⁶I thought to scatter them and blot out the memory of them from humankind; ²⁷but 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.” ²⁸They are a nation void of sense; there is no understanding in them. ²⁹If they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern what the end would be. ³⁰How 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? ³¹Indeed their rock is not like our Rock; our enemies are fools. ³²Their vine comes from the vinestock of Sodom, from the vineyards of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters are bitter; ³³their wine is the poison of serpents, the cruel venom of asps. ³⁴Is not this laid up in store with me, sealed up in my treasuries? ³⁵Vengeance 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. ³⁶Indeed the Lord will vindicate his people, have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, neither bond nor free remaining. ³⁷Then he 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 libations? Let them rise up and help you, let them be your protection!

³⁹See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god beside me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand. ⁴⁰For I lift up my hand to heaven, and swear: As I live forever, ⁴¹when I whet my flashing sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment; I will take vengeance on my adversaries, and will repay those who hate me. ⁴²I 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. ⁴³Praise, 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.

⁴⁴Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua son of Nun. ⁴⁵When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, ⁴⁶he said to them: “Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. ⁴⁷This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.” ⁴⁸On that very day the Lord addressed Moses as follows: ⁴⁹“Ascend this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, across from Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites for a possession; ⁵⁰you shall die there on the mountain that you ascend and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin; ⁵¹because both of you broke faith with me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to maintain my holiness among the Israelites. ⁵²Although you may view the land from a distance, you shall not enter it—the land that I am giving to the Israelites.”

33This is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the Israelites before his death. ²He said: The Lord came from Sinai, and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran. With him were myriads of holy ones; at his right, a host of his own. ³Indeed, O favorite among peoples, all his holy ones were in your charge; they marched at your heels, accepted direction from you. ⁴Moses charged us with the law, as a possession for the assembly of Jacob. ⁵There arose a king in Jeshurun, when the leaders of the people assembled— the united tribes of Israel.

⁶May Reuben live, and not die out, even though his numbers are few. ⁷And this he said of Judah: O Lord, give heed to Judah, and bring him to his people; strengthen his hands for him, and be a help against his adversaries.

⁸And of Levi he said: Give to Levi your Thummim, and your Urim to your loyal one, whom you tested at Massah, with whom you contended at the waters of Meribah; ⁹who said of his father and mother, “I regard them not”; he ignored his kin, and did not acknowledge his children. For they observed your word, and kept your covenant. ¹⁰They teach Jacob your ordinances, and Israel your law; they place incense before you, and whole burnt offerings on your altar. ¹¹Bless, O Lord, his substance, and accept the work of his hands; crush the loins of his adversaries, of those that hate him, so that they do not rise again.

¹²Of Benjamin he said: The beloved of the Lord rests in safety— the High God surrounds him all day long— the beloved rests between his shoulders. ¹³And of Joseph he said: Blessed by the Lord be his land, with the choice gifts of heaven above, and of the deep that lies beneath; ¹⁴with the choice fruits of the sun, and the rich yield of the months; ¹⁵with the finest produce of the ancient mountains, and the abundance of the everlasting hills; ¹⁶with the choice gifts of the earth and its fullness, and the favor of the one who dwells on Sinai. Let these come on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince among his brothers. ¹⁷A firstborn bull—majesty is his! His horns are the horns of a wild ox; with them he gores the peoples, driving them to the ends of the earth; such are the myriads of Ephraim, such the thousands of Manasseh.

¹⁸And of Zebulun he said: Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out; and Issachar, in your tents. ¹⁹They call peoples to the mountain; there they offer the right sacrifices; for they suck the affluence of the seas and the hidden treasures of the sand. ²⁰And of Gad he said: Blessed be the enlargement of Gad! Gad lives like a lion; he tears at arm and scalp. ²¹He chose the best for himself, for there a commander’s allotment was reserved; he came at the head of the people, he executed the justice of the Lord, and his ordinances for Israel.

²²And of Dan he said: Dan is a lion’s whelp that leaps forth from Bashan. ²³And of Naphtali he said: O Naphtali, sated with favor, full of the blessing of the Lord, possess the west and the south. ²⁴And of Asher he said: Most blessed of sons be Asher; may he be the favorite of his brothers, and may he dip his foot in oil. ²⁵Your bars are iron and bronze; and as your days, so is your strength.

²⁶There is none like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens to your help, majestic through the skies. ²⁷He subdues the ancient gods, shatters the forces of old; he drove out the enemy before you, and said, “Destroy!” ²⁸So Israel lives in safety, untroubled is Jacob’s abode in a land of grain and wine, where the heavens drop down dew. ²⁹Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph! Your enemies shall come fawning to you, and you shall tread on their backs.

34Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, ²all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, ³the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar. ⁴The Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”

⁵Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. ⁶He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. ⁷Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. ⁸The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.

⁹Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses. ¹⁰Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. ¹¹He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, ¹²and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.