The Song of Moses Part 2 - Deuteronomy 32:7-52

Intro

Last week we considered the opening of the song of Moses - the third witness invoked by Moses against the nation of Israel. We saw the witness of the Scriptures, the witness of the scenery, and we are now in the midst of the witness of the song.

By way of review, Yahweh Himself established this witness-song back in 31:19. Moses then gives the witness of the word and the witness of the world, which we saw a few weeks ago.

Contextually, Moses finds himself writing this song from a place of conflict. He’s an old man, 120 years old. He is a man of strength, poise, and humility, all by God’s grace. He has led two generations of Hebrews out of Egypt, through the wilderness and to the doorstep of the promised land. He has walked with God, and now prepared to die and be with Him. Yet he leaves on a sour note, horizontally speaking. His relationship with the nation is not great here at the end of his life. He prophesies apostasy, idolatry, and spiritual prostitution, and calls heaven and earth, the Torah, and this song to bear witness to these sins.

As we saw last week, this song is pastoral, invoking the imagery of a shepherd in the fields, observing the rain of God’s Word refreshing the land and refreshing the people of God. This same imagery captivated David as he spoke 500 years later of the blessed Messiah standing firm like a tree planted by streams of living water in Psalm 1 and again of the Great Shepherd leading His flock beside those same streams. Moses was a shepherd, both of physical sheep and figurative sheep, and it is in that tone that he delivers the song.

It is also a song of praise, ascribing glory and majesty to Yahweh on high. Again, Moses sets the trajectory of the song, this time heavenward, calling the nation to focus their attention on Yahweh, and the greatness of both his character and his works.

Finally, Moses introduces this song as eminently polemical. It stands in opposition to and judgement over the people of Israel, attacking their corruption, their defect, their perversity, their crookedness, their foolishness and their folly.

Moses now continues his song with 5 dissonant movements that I have outlined as follows:

Yahweh’s Faithfulness - 7-14

Israel Failure - 15-18

Yahweh’s Fire - 19-27

Israel’s Foolishness - 28-35

Yahweh’s Free Grace - 26-44

By way of brief sidebar, this is one of the first times we see an extended section of Hebrew poetry in the Old Testament. The Psalms are obviously defined exclusively by Hebrew poetry, and it also figures very prominently in prophetic literature as well. But in the historical narratives of the early part of the Old Testament, at least as we have it in our English Bibles, poetry is a rarer occurence. Only 3 times do we see true long-form Hebrew poetry in the first five books of the Old Testament. We see small fragments here and there, but only four times is a true long-form poem recorded in Genesis through Deuteronomy. The first is the Testament or Blessing of Jacob recorded in Genesis 49. The second is the Song of the Sea, recorded for us in Exodus 15. The third is right here, the Song of Moses, and the third is the Blessing of Moses in the next chapter, Deuteronomy 33.

So with that in mind, let’s look at the text.

First, we will see Yahweh’s Faithfulness.

Yahweh’s Faithfulness - 7-14

The first words out of Moses’ mouth, after the introduction in 1-6 invoke two actions and two outcomes.

The first action is to remember. This is not a passing recollection for Israel. This is a time of intentional reflection on past events.

The second action is to consider. To consider is to look closely with the purpose of achieving clarity, understanding, and perception.

And what is the object of these actions? What is being considered? What is being remembered? The days of old and years of all generations.

To put it simply, the nation of Israel is called upon, by Moses, to remember their history. Remember their story. Remember who they are and what they have done, and more importantly as we will see in vss 8 and onward, who God is and what He has done.

And what is the outcome of remembering and considering? Being informed, and being told. In other words, when Israel both collectively and individually takes the time to remember and consider, and to do so with purposeful intent, they will get what they came for. They will be informed of their history, they will be told of their legacy.

And what are the vessels through which the telling of the history comes? The fathers and the elders. This statement underlines the importance of the oral tradition for the nation of Israel. They were a people who spoke the stories of their history, who verbalized their shared story. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the written word was incredibly rare. The people of Israel in that day relied on the spoken word and on the faithful passing on of their history and law from one generation to the next, and the beauty of Moses’ self-awareness is on full display here: He is reminding the nation of Israel to receive the history and the law and the word about Yahweh verbally, in the very moment that he is setting the example for them by teaching them this song.

But Moses is not just teaching the people to remember general ideas or general teachings. He specifies what they are to remember: namely the blessings of Yahweh’s provision.

Moses describes with eloquent detail and striking imagery the provision of Yahweh for His people.

He begins in verses 8 and 9 by reminding Israel of God’s special grace to them. Of all the nations on earth, God selected them to be His people. He set his lovingkindness and tender mercy upon them, not because of their merit, but because of His grace.

Verse 10 begins to describe the provision of Yahweh for His people by first describing the desolation of his original state. He was in a desert land, in a howling wilderness wasteland.

In the midst of that, Yahweh encircles, cares, and guards. These three actions effectively describe the work of God as demonstrated throughout the Pentateuch. From the time of Abraham to the time of Moses’ teaching of this song, the encircling, caring, protecting work of Yahweh is on full display. Whether through the provision of a son, the provision of a ram, the provision of a wife, the provision of 12 tribal heads, the provision of wisdom in a famine, the provision of a leader, the provision of venture capital to start a new nation, the provision of dry land on which to walk, the provision of water from the rock or manna from the sky, or the provision of unwearing shoes and clothes for 40 years in the wilderness, God encircled, cared, and guarded Israel time and time again.

Moreover, Moses describes Yahweh as an eagle who spreads its wings in protection over its nest, as well as under it, catching the struggling, falling eaglets as they fall and struggle to fly.

And not only did Yahweh protect and provide, He also poured out abundant blessing on them. Even in the wilderness, they were blessing with produce and honey and oil, with cattle and sheep and goats and rams and what and wine. He protects. He provides. He blesses.

And this is the story of Israel. Up to this point they had experience this provision and protection and blessing in part, and they would continue to experience it more fully under the leadership of Joshua, and later under David, and ultimately under Solomon when Israel prospered in the land. All these things were part and parcel of the Hebrew experience for the next 500 years.

So Moses calls upon the nation, not only in his day, but for all time: Remember and consider the protection and provision and blessing of the Lord. To put it in the words of Johnson Oatman Jr, count your blessings, name them one by one, count your many blessings, see what God hath done.

There is an immensely practical point of application here for us.

Just like Israel, we are a forgetful people. But just like Israel, God has provided for us beyond our imagination. We would do well, like Israel, to remember all that God has done for us. When life is overwhelming and we tossed about by every wind of care and current of anxiety, I encourage you, just as Moses encouraged Israel: stop. Remember. Consider. Look back at your life. Look at all the ways the Lord provided. Look at all the ways He protected. Look at all the ways He blessed. And in your looking, be reminded of who He is and what He is capable of, and then trust that He will bring you through whatever you face today. He has done it before, He will do it again.

You might ask what ways you can apply this in your own life, and I can think of one great way that has brought me much comfort and joy over the years. Might seem weird or whatever, but I promise you it is profitable. Keep a journal. Write in it every day. Write down thoughts, prayer requests, developments in your life. Then when you look back in 5 years or 10 years, you can see tangibly where the Lord has brought you. Case in point: when I was home for Christmas, I found the journal I kept from January to May of 2016. Now 6 years ago. Reading through that journal, I was astonished at some of the things I read, both in good and bad ways. I stopped right there and thanked the Lord for how He has grown me, and how far He has brought me in my sanctification in just six years.

Moses called the people to remember and to consider Yahweh’s Faithfulness, and he now prophesies against Israel’s failure.

Israel’s Forgetfulness - 15-18

Moses positions the forgetfulness of Israel in stark contrast against the faithfulness of Yahweh. Having spent the last 9 verses extolling the faithfulness of God in protecting and providing for the nation of Israel, verse 15 comes as a jolt.

Moses uses vivid equestrian language here, comparing Israel to a horse. With the provision of Yahweh for the nation, they grow fat and thick and sleek, like a well-fed horse. The Lord fed them and prospered them, as he said he would, under the leadership of Joshua and David and Solomon. The nation becomes exceedingly powerful and exceedingly wealthy - they became fat, thick, and sleek.

And what do they do? They kick. Just like an unruly horse who refuses to be bridled and bitted, the nation of Israel kicks against Yahweh and against His leading.

And what is the outcome? Chronologically, Moses using the word then, the nation forsakes their God, and scorns the Rock of their salvation.

These two outcomes of the fatness paint a stark picture of Israel.

To forsake is really just to fail to pay attention to. That’s the sense of the Hebrew word. It’s a lack of proper attention, and specifically here, it’s a lack of proper attention to the covenant and to the God of the covenant. Ultimately this is spiritual and theological laziness - a failure to do the hard work of right thinking and right living.

And Moses then equates forsaking with scorn. Scorn carries the idea of a willful rejection of something. Israel willfully and intentionally rejected the words and works of God.

Moses moves down the chain. First comes forsaking, not paying attention to Yahweh. Then comes scorn, rejecting Him in their hearts and minds.

Then comes idolatry, Moses describes it as making Yahweh jealous with strange gods. This was the same sin forbidden in the first and second commandments, and subsequently prophesied against both by Jeremiah in Jeremiah 7 and by Ezekiel in Ezekiel 8.

Then come the abominations that provoke Yahweh to anger, also prophesied against by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and for Moses these abominations take the form of false and wicked sacrifices to demons, unknown gods, and johnny-come-lately gods.

Moses puts a capstone on all of this by reiterating his original point: this was all born out of neglect and forgetfulness. Ultimately Israel’s laziness led to their demise.

Moses’ point is this: Spiritual and theological laziness leads to spiritual and theological apostasy. We might call this today false teaching, false worship, and disobedience.

This is something that was not only true for Israel, but true for all of humanity. As Paul tells us in Romans 1, we have an innate understanding of who God is. That understanding is imprinted upon our souls in the imago Dei. And yet all of us forsake and scorn the God who made us, and the God who is the only way to salvation.

And not only is this a reality in Israel in Moses’ day, and a reality in the world for all of time, but it is even a reality for the visible church in our day.

We are surrounded by theologically lazy Christians and church leaders, who refuse to do the hard work of knowing God as He has revealed himself, and subsequently living by that revelation. This has produced in our day an overwhelming number of Christians in name only, people who profess to believe in Christ, and yet do not truly know him nor truly follow him, and it has produced teachers and leaders who would prefer not to preach the Word in season and out of season, and would rather tickle the ears of the hearers.

I encourage you tonight, do the hard work of knowing God and loving Him. Do not forsake Him. Do not neglect Him. Do not forget Him.

Paul’s exhortation to Timothy is timely and appropriate in light of what we have seen from Deuteronomy tonight:

1 Timothy 4:13–16 NASB95

Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching. Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.

Moses’ contrasts Yahweh’s faithfulness with Israel’s forgetfulness, and that forgetfulness brings forth Yahweh’s fire, in verses 19 through 25.

Yahweh’s Fire - 19-27

Yahweh looks upon the progression of forgetfulness laid out in the previous 4 verses, and His response is to spurn Israel, essentially to disregard them and discard them. They provoked Him and He poured out His wrath in like kind and measure.

The middle lines of verses 20 and 21 lay out the summary of Israel’s actions toward God:

They are perverse

They are faithless

They provoke jealousy

They provoke anger

Once again, Israel proves to be a type of the whole world. The same sins that marked Israel also mark our world today.

Perversity is pre-eminent in our world. That word perverse in the Hebrew means twisted or turned. Just as Israel was considered a perverse generation, so also our world is exceedingly perverse. Our nation has said that life is not life, men are not men, women are not women, truth is not truth, and morality is not morality. Our world has perverted, turned, twisted these things and made them what they are not, good, true, and beautiful things into evil, false, and despicable creations of their own imagination and in their own image.

Therefore we must guard ourselves from this perversity. We must ensure that we turn nothing of God’s goodness, God’s truth, and God’s beauty into something that serves our own designs and our own purposes.

Faithfulness is forgotten in our world. This word carries the connotation of trustworthiness or reliability. These words indicate stability, someone who can be counted on. But let’s face the facts. We live in a world of flakes. Israel was a nation of flakes.

Therefore we also must guard ourselves here. Are we steadfast and faithful in our marriages, in our church commitments, in our families, at our jobs, in our friendships? Are we reliable? Are we trustworthy? Do we show up when we say we will and do what we say we will do?

Provocation is paramount in our world. We are surrounded by non-gods, idols who vy for our attention and worship. The world around us has every manner of idol before their eyes daily. I read earlier this week in a book about how our response to loss indicates what we worship, namely, what losses to we respond to with anger or resentment or heightened passion? Those are the things we worship. Let’s get really real tonight: how would you react if you woke up tomorrow morning and had lost the ability to speak? Not another word could ever be uttered out of your mouth, you were rendered dumb for the rest of your life. If your reaction is one of anger or resentment or frustration, maybe you worship the sound of your own voice. What if we woke up tomorrow and Joe Biden announced that the US is now a Chinese colony? America doesn’t exist anymore. Would you be angry? Would you lose it? Maybe you worship America. What if a burglar snuck into your house tonight and stole your Wi-Fi router and your TV and you could never access the internet or watch TV ever again? Your reaction might tell you whether or not you worship entertainment. What if we lose trade relations with Asia, and there’s a massive smartphone shortage, and then your smartphone falls out your car window by accident, and you have to use a landline for the rest of your life? Your reaction indicates your worship.

Israel ascribed principal, primary, and supreme importance to that which was not God. To idols. That temptation is here for us as well. Therefore we must be careful to worship God as God, and nothing less. Anything else is idolatry.

The beginning of 20 and the rest of the section lay out God’s actions of judgment against Israel, His fire.

He will hide His face - this is the first facet of God’s judgment, and in many ways in encapsulates all the rest. To have God show His face is to have Him give gifts of common grace. The shining of the sun, the development of culture and technology, the ability to love and be loved, the ability to thrive and prosper, regardless of the state of your soul, is a gift of common grace. It is evidence that God is showing His face to you, as it were, looking upon you in sustaining and providing love. For God then to turn His face away is for Him to remove those common, everyday graces. For Him to remove His hand of restraint from evil in the world and allow it to run rampant. This forsaking, this turning away, is the same turning away that Christ experienced on the cross. It is the ultimate form of God’s judgment.

He will make them jealous

He will provoke them - the jealousy and provocation go together here. As they provoked God to jealousy with foreign gods, so He will provoke them to jealousy with foreign peoples. Hosea, Paul and Peter all understood this provocation as the ingrafting of Gentiles into God’s redemptive plan and people, that God would pour out His covenant love on the whole world through Christ, and the Messiah would be a Messiah not only of Jews but also of Gentiles, and that this act of mercy would provoke the Jews first to anger and jealousy, and then subsequently to repentance. We see this nowhere more clearly than in the story of Jonah, who seethed with anger over God’s purpose to save Nineveh, a city of wicked Gentiles. Israel’s judgment and condemnation resulted in life and salvation for the Gentiles. Even in judgment then, God has a good and glorious purpose for all that comes to pass.

He will heap misfortunes - this is the idea of bad things. A pagan might call it bad luck. But Moses is clear: even what appears to be bad luck for Israel is from the hand of the Lord, passed down in judgment upon them.

He will use his arrows on them - arrows in Old Testament literature are always used to symbolize war. The picture of Yahweh using His arrows against Israel is a picture of war. Yahweh is at war with them for their forgetfulness, folly, and faithlessness, and the more practical idea in play here is that war itself will be used by God as judgment on Israel. And as the book of Kings teaches us, after Solomon, the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Israel were perpetually at war, both with one another and with the surrounding nations.

He will waste them with famine - Hebrew prophetic literature, specifically from the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations, speak to the reality of famine as judgment from God. The historical books of Kings and Chronicles record at least 4 specific and separate famines that occurred in the period of time leading up to the exile. The contrast is this: God was faithful in the wilderness to feed Israel with manna from heaven, but part of the turning of his face away from them is removing his hand of provision so that even the children go hungry, according to Lamentations 3.

He will consume them with plague - Ezekiel speaks regularly of plagues - sickness, disease, etc. coming down upon Israel for their disobedience.

He will send beasts upon them - beasts could speak of one of two things. One interpretation is that because of the death and destruction, feral animals will run wild and feed upon the flesh of the dead. This is a harrowing picture, and one that Jeremiah speaks of in Jeremiah 15 and 16. A second interpretation would be that the beasts symbolize the foreign nations and armies that would come to devour Israel and Judah, the armies of Assyria and Babylon.

He will send crawling things on them - at first brush this might seem like bugs or pestilence, but the reading of the King James or the NIV is enlightening. I believe that crawling things of the dust is an allusion to the curse of the serpent in Genesis 3, where the serpent is cursed to crawl in the dust forever. I believe then that the venom of the viper, to use the phrasing of the NIV, is indicative of the attacks of Satan himself upon Israel and Judah. Theologically this approach teaches us that event he work of Satan in the world is part of God’s plan for judgment, and even Satan does not act autonomously, but is sent by God to do His bidding.

Finally, the judgment is summarized in verses 25: sword and terror will come upon them from within and without, and there will be no discrimination: men and women, old and young alike will suffer under the hand of God’s just punishment.

These judgments are not only descriptive but prescriptive. I would venture to say that we are in the midst of many of these judgments today. Misfortunes such as high gas prices. Arrows of war all around us. A famine of baby formula. The beasts of foreign nations and armies circling around to devour. The attacks of Satan himself against the nations of the world, including our own.

God does not change, and just as He judged Israel in this way, so also He will judge our world today.

The judgments proclaimed by Moses in verses 19-25 are harrowing and harsh. Israel has and will continue to bring God’s wrath down upon themselves by their disobedience and their trespass of the covenant.

But the motif of Moses and the prophets and indeed the motif of the entire Scriptures is one of salvation through judgment. And next week, as we conclude Moses’ song, we will behold the glory of the salvation that awaits Israel and indeed the whole world.