Leeser(i)
1 Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as heavy rains upon the grass, and as showers upon herbs.
3 When I call on the name of the Lord, ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are just: the God of truth and without iniquity, just and upright is he.
5 The corruption is not his, it is the defect of his children, of the perverse and crooked generation.
6 Will ye thus requite the Lord, O people, worthless and unwise? is he not thy father who hath bought thee? is it not he who hath made thee, and established thee?
7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of former generations; ask thy father, and he will tell thee; thy elders, and they will say it unto thee:
8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of man: he set the bounds of the tribes according to the number of the sons of Israel.
9 For the portion of the Lord is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
10 He found him in a desert land, and in the waste of the howling of the wilderness; he encircled him, he watched him, he guarded him as the apple of his eye.
11 As an eagle stirreth up his nest, fluttereth over his young, spreadeth abroad his wings, seizeth them, beareth them aloft on his pinions:
12 So did the Lord alone lead him, and there was not with him a stranger god.
13 He caused him to stride on the high places of the earth, and he ate the products of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty stone;
14 Cream of cows, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of wheat; and of the blood of the grape thou drunkest unmixed wine.
15 Thus did Yeshurun grow fat, and he kicked; thou art grown fat, thick, fleshy;and then he forsook the God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
16 They incensed him with strange gods, with abominations they provoked him to anger.
17 They sacrificed unto evil spirits, things that are not god, gods that they know not, new ones lately come up, which your fathers dreaded not.
18 Of the Rock that begat thee thou wast unmindful, and forgottest the God that had brought thee forth.
19 And the Lord saw this, and he was angry; because of the provoking of his sons and of his daughters.
20 And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end will be; for a perverse generation are they, children in whom there is no faith.
21 They have moved me to wrath with things that are not god; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities; and I too will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a worthless nation.
22 For a fire is kindled in my anger, and it burneth unto the lowest deep; and it consumeth the earth with her products, and it setteth on fire the foundations of the mountains.
23 I will heap upon them miseries; all my arrows will I spend upon them.
24 They shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter deadly disease; also the tooth of beasts will I let loose against them, with the poison of serpents that crawl in the dust.
25 Without shall the sword destroy, and terror within the chambers, both the young man and the virgin, the suckling with the man of gray hairs.
26 I said, I would drive them into one corner, I would cause their remembrance to cease from among men:
27 Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their oppressors should mistake the truth, lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the Lord hath not wrought all this.
28 For a nation void of counsel are they, and there is no understanding in them.
29 If they were but wise, they would understand this, they would consider their latter end!
30 How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had delivered them up?
31 For not as our Rock is their rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.
32 For from the vine of Sodom is their vine, and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, they bear bitter clusters.
33 The poison of serpents is their wine, and the deadly venom of asps.
34 Behold! this is laid up in store with me, it is sealed up among my treasures!
35 Mine are vengeance and recompense, at the time that their foot shall slip; for nigh draweth the day of their calamity, and the future speedeth along for them.
36 For the Lord will espouse the cause of his people, and bethink himself concerning his servants: when he seeth that their power is gone, and the guarded and fortified axe no more.
37 Then will he say, Where are their gods, the rock in whom they trusted,
38 They that ate the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink-offerings? let them arise and help you, let them be a protection over you.
39 See now that I, even I, am he, ard there is no god with me: I alone kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; and no one can deliver out of my hand.
40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.
41 When I whet my glittering sword, and my hand taketh hold on judgment: I will render vengeance unto my enemies, and those that hate me will I requite.
42 I will make my arrows drunken with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; from the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the crushed head of the enemy.
43 Speak aloud, O ye nations, the praises of his people; for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and vengeance will he render to his adversaries, and forgive his land, and people.