CHAPTER 32

(1451 B.C.)

THE SONG OF MOSES

¹Give ear, O ye Heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O Earth, the Words of My Mouth (both Heaven and Earth are called to account, because this song affects both).

²My Doctrine shall drop as the rain, My Speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass (the Word of the Lord always brings prosperity):

³Because I will publish the Name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God (it is the Greatness of God as the Almighty that is celebrated here).

⁴He is the Rock, His Work is perfect: for all His Ways are judgment: a God of Truth and without iniquity, Just and Right is He. (Five times in this Song Jehovah is praised as the Rock [Vss. 4, 15, 18, 30-31]. The occurrences in Verses 31 and 37 ironically refer to the false rocks of the nations. Five is the number of Grace.)

⁵They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of His Children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. (Israel claimed to be the Children of God, but they were not; they were rather a stain and a reproach [Isa. 1:4]. How much does this pertain to the modern Church?)

⁶Do ye thus requite the LORD (repay Him for His Blessings by corrupting yourselves), O foolish people and unwise? Is not He your Father Who has bought you? Has He not made you, and established you?

⁷Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask your father, and he will show you; your Elders, and they will tell you.

⁸When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the Children of Israel (long before there was an Israel, the Lord was planning for them).

⁹For the LORDs portion is His People; Jacob is the lot of His Inheritance (the Lord measured out the inheritance of Israel, and did it Personally).

¹⁰He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the Apple of His Eye (this must be taken as indicating that Israel is ever in the Eye of the Lord, the object of His constant and tenderest care).

¹¹As a eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads abroad her wings, takes them, bears them on her wings:

¹²So the LORD Alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him (Israel must admit that none of the strange gods worshipped by the heathen had anything to do with what the Lord Alone had done for them).

¹³He made him ride on the high places of the Earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and He made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock (blessings);

¹⁴Butter of kine (cattle), and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and you did drink the pure blood of the grape. (This does not speak of fermented wine, as some claim. What they esteemed as a luxury was the pure unadulterated juice of the grape, freshly pressed out and drunk with the foam on it. Verses 7-14 celebrate His Goodness and Bounty during the period of the Pentateuch.)

¹⁵But Jeshurun waxed fat (Jeshurun means righteous; He predicts that Israel will fall into a state, the opposite of that to which it was destined), and kicked: you are waxed fat, you are grown thick, you are covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his Salvation. (Verses 15-19 record Israels evil response to that goodness during the period of their kings. They foolishly esteemed the Rock.)

¹⁶They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they Him to anger (sinners in the hands of an angry God).

¹⁷They sacrificed unto devils (demons), not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not (gods recently invented or discovered).

¹⁸Of the Rock Who begat you you are unmindful, and have forgotten God Who formed you (rebelled against their Maker).

¹⁹And when the LORD saw it (saw the idols), He abhorred them, because of the provoking of His Sons, and of His Daughters.

²⁰And He said, I will hide My Face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. (This Verse contemplates the period between the Captivity in Babylon and the Advent of the Messiah. They had faith all right, but it was in the wrong thing, their own religion. It is the same problem presently!)

²¹They have moved Me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked Me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. (This Verse relates to the period of the Acts of the Apostles [Rom. 10:11]. It pertains to the Lord turning to the Gentiles.)

²²For a fire is kindled in My anger, and shall burn unto the lowest Hell, and shall consume the Earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. (Verses 22-33 relate to Israels dispersion among the nations of the world, after A.D. 70.)

²³I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend My arrows upon them (as Righteousness brings Blessings, wickedness brings Judgment).

²⁴They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

²⁵The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs (has happened to Israel countless times in the last nearly 2,000 years, but more particularly during the Holocaust of World War II).

²⁶I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men (at least what they once had been):

²⁷Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy (could be translated, That I should be provoked to wrath by the enemy ascribing the destruction of Israel to their own prowess), lest their adversaries (Israels adversaries) should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD has not done all this (the enemies of Israel should realize that they can only do to Israel what God allows them to do; and to be sure, one day He will turn on the enemies of Israel, and will do so with a fury [Ezek., Chpts. 38-39]).

²⁸For they are a Nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.

²⁹O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! (The end result of forsaking God.)

³⁰How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?

³¹For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being Judges (that Rock was Christ [I Cor. 10:4]).

³²For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter (by using Sodom and Gomorrah as comparisons, the Lord is saying that Israel is good for nothing but destruction):

³³Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps (and this is said of Israel by the Lord; so we know now why they crucified the Saviour).

³⁴Is not this laid up in store with Me, and sealed up among My treasures? (Verses 34-43 pertain to Israels sufferings under the future Antichrist, and their final restoration.)

³⁵To Me belongs vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste (the coming Great Tribulation [Mat. 24:21]).

³⁶For the LORD shall judge His People, and repent Himself for His Servants, when He sees that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left (Israel is at the place of extermination, which they will be under the Antichrist; then the Lord will, in effect, say, Its enough!).

³⁷And He shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted,

³⁸Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection (of course, there will be none to help; this speaks of the coming Battle of Armageddon).

³⁹See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god with Me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any who can deliver out of My Hand (there is no God but Jehovah).

⁴⁰For I lift up My Hand to Heaven, and say, I live for ever.

⁴¹If I whet My glittering Sword, and My Hand take hold on Judgment; I will render vengeance to My Enemies, and will reward them who hate Me.

⁴²I will make My Arrows drunk with blood, and My Sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy (this is the Battle of Armageddon, described in Ezekiel, Chapters 38-39).

⁴³Rejoice, O ye nations, with His People: for He will avenge the blood of His Servants, and will render vengeance to His Adversaries, and will be merciful unto His Land, and to His People (this pertains to the Second Coming, when the Lord will then avenge the blood of His servants [Zech. 14:1-4]).

MOSES CHARGES ISRAEL

⁴⁴And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea (Joshua) the son of Nun.

⁴⁵And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel:

⁴⁶And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which you shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this Law.

⁴⁷For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing you shall prolong your days in the land, where you go over Jordan to possess it (Moses tells Israel that the entirety of their lives and living were bound up in obedience to the Law; it is the same presently with the Word of the Lord; but, sadly, the modern Church is leaving the Word of the Lord).

CANAAN

⁴⁸And the LORD spoke unto Moses that selfsame day, saying,

⁴⁹Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the Children of Israel for a possession:

⁵⁰And die in the mount where you go up, and be gathered unto your people; as Aaron your brother died in Mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people:

⁵¹Because you trespassed against Me among the Children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you sanctified Me not in the midst of the children of Israel. (The sin of striking the Rock the second time instead of speaking to it, as the Lord commanded, was actually a grievous sin. The Rock typified Christ, Who would be smitten at Calvary and, from what He would do at the Cross, a life-giving stream would pour forth for thirsting humanity. To turn and strike the Rock again at a later time, in essence, spoiled the Type, which, in effect, said that the Cross of Christ, regarding its Sacrifice, was insufficient. In other words, it was a repudiation of the Cross, which, no doubt, Moses did not intend to do. But, nevertheless, it was done [Num. 20:11-13]. Let all know and understand, if works of the Law, and we refer to Law thats made up by any individual or religious Denomination, are resorted to, pure and simple, Christ shall profit you nothing [Gal. 5:2]. Everything we receive from the Lord, Christ is the Source and the Cross is the Means [Rom. 6:3-14].)

⁵²Yet you shall see the land before you; but you shall not go thither unto the land which I give the Children of Israel. (As previously stated, the Law can never inherit the Promise. It is not that the Law is unfavorable, but rather that man is unable to render perfect Law-keeping [Gal. 3:18].)