1  ^d“Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak,

and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

2  May my teaching drop as the rain,

my speech distill as the dew,

like gentle rain upon the tender grass,

and like showers upon the herb.

3  For I will ^eproclaim the name of the Lord;

ascribe greatness to our God!

4  “The ^fRock, ^ghis work is perfect,

for ^hall his ways are justice.

A God of ⁱfaithfulness and without iniquity,

just and upright is he.

5  They have dealt corruptly with him;

^jthey are no longer his children because they are blemished;

they are a crooked and twisted generation.

6  Do you thus repay the Lord,

you foolish and senseless people?

Is not he your ^kfather, who created you,

who made you and established you?

7  Remember the ^ldays of old;

consider the years of many generations;

ask your father, and he will show you,

your elders, and they will tell you.

8  When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,

when he divided mankind,

^mhe fixed the borders¹ of the peoples

according to the number of the sons of God.²

9  But the Lord’s portion is his people,

Jacob his allotted ⁿheritage.

10  “He found him in a desert land,

and in the howling waste of the wilderness;

he encircled him, he cared for him,

he kept him as the ^oapple of his eye.

11  Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,

that flutters over its young,

spreading out its wings, catching them,

^pbearing them on its pinions,

12  the Lord alone ^qguided him,

no foreign god was with him.

13  He ^rmade him ride on the high places of the land,

and he ate the produce of the field,

and he suckled him with ^shoney out of the rock,

and ^toil out of the flinty rock.

14  Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,

with fat³ of lambs,

rams of Bashan and goats,

with the very finest⁴ of the wheat—

and you drank foaming wine made from the ^ublood of the grape.

15  “But ^vJeshurun ^wgrew fat, and kicked;

you grew fat, stout, and sleek;

then he forsook God who made him

and scoffed at the ^xRock of his salvation.

16  ^yThey stirred him to jealousy with strange gods;

with abominations they provoked him to anger.

17  They ^zsacrificed to demons that were not God,

to gods they had never known,

to ^anew gods that had come recently,

whom your fathers had never dreaded.

18  You were unmindful of the Rock that bore⁵ you,

and you forgot the God who gave you birth.

19  “The Lord saw it and spurned them,

because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.

20  And 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 is no faithfulness.

21  They have made me jealous with what is no god;

they have provoked me to anger with their idols.

So ^bI will make them jealous with those who are no people;

I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

22  For ^ca fire is kindled by my anger,

and it burns to the depths of Sheol,

devours the earth and its increase,

and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

23  “‘And I will heap disasters upon them;

I will spend my arrows on them;

24  they shall be wasted with hunger,

and devoured by plague

and poisonous pestilence;

I will send the teeth of ^dbeasts against them,

with the venom of things that crawl in the dust.

25  ^eOutdoors the sword shall bereave,

and indoors terror,

for young man and woman alike,

the nursing child with the man of gray hairs.

26  I would have said, “I will cut them to pieces;

I will wipe them from human memory,”

27  had I not feared provocation by the enemy,

lest their adversaries should misunderstand,

lest they should say, “Our hand is triumphant,

it was not the Lord who did all this.”’