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DEUTER ONOM Y 32
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The Lord alone guided them;
they followed no foreign gods.
He let them ride over the highlands
and feast on the crops of the fields.
He nourished them with honey from
the rock
and olive oil from the stony ground.
He fed them yogurt from the herd
and milk from the flock,
together with the fat of lambs.
He gave them choice rams from Bashan,
and goats,
together with the choicest wheat.
You drank the finest wine,
made from the juice of grapes.
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“But Israel* soon became fat and unruly;
the people grew heavy, plump, and
stuffed!
Then they abandoned the God who had
made them;
they made light of the Rock of their
salvation.
They stirred up his jealousy by worshiping
foreign gods;
they provoked his fury with detestable
deeds.
They offered sacrifices to demons, which
are not God,
to gods they had not known before,
to new gods only recently arrived,
to gods their ancestors had never feared.
You neglected the Rock who had
fathered you;
you forgot the God who had given
you birth.
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“The Lord saw this and drew back,
provoked to anger by his own sons
and daughters.
He said, ‘I will abandon them;
then see what becomes of them.
For they are a twisted generation,
children without integrity.
They have roused my jealousy by
worshiping things that are not God;
they have provoked my anger with their
useless idols.
Now I will rouse their jealousy through
people who are not even a people;
I will provoke their anger through the
foolish Gentiles.
For my anger blazes forth like fire
and burns to the depths of the grave.*
It devours the earth and all its crops
and ignites the foundations of the
mountains.
I will heap disasters upon them
and shoot them down with my arrows.
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32:15 Hebrew Jeshurun, a term of endearment for Israel.
32:22 Hebrew of Sheol. 32:31 The meaning of the Hebrew
is uncertain. Greek version reads our enemies are fools.
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I will weaken them with famine,
burning fever, and deadly disease.
I will send the fangs of wild beasts
and poisonous snakes that glide in
the dust.
Outside, the sword will bring death,
and inside, terror will strike
both young men and young women,
both infants and the aged.
I would have annihilated them,
wiping out even the memory of them.
But I feared the taunt of Israel’s enemy,
who might misunderstand and say,
“Our own power has triumphed!
The Lord had nothing to do with this!”’
“But Israel is a senseless nation;
the people are foolish, without
understanding.
Oh, that they were wise and could
understand this!
Oh, that they might know their fate!
How could one person chase a thousand
of them,
and two people put ten thousand
to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
unless the Lord had given them up?
But the rock of our enemies is not like
our Rock,
as even they recognize.*
Their vine grows from the vine of
Sodom,
from the vineyards of Gomorrah.
Their grapes are poison,
and their clusters are bitter.
Their wine is the venom of serpents,
the deadly poison of cobras.
• Jealousy
DE U TE R ON OM Y 32:21
Jealousy is a demand for someone else’s
exclusive affection or loyalty. Most of
us recognize inappropriate jealousy. For
example, it is destructive for a man to
get upset when his wife talks pleasantly
with another man. However, a man’s
jealousy is entirely appropriate if his wife
is treating another man as her husband.
This is the kind of jealousy God felt for
his people. They were offering to idols the
kind of worship and trust that only God
deserved. It was an unfaithfulness God
likened to adultery. God makes strong,
exclusive demands on us: We must treat
God, and no one else in all the universe,
as God.