Scripture Daily

Context No. 1873 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 32:17-32: in context

17They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods that they didn’t know, to new gods that came up recently, which your fathers didn’t dread. 18Of the Rock who became your father, you are unmindful, and have forgotten God who gave you birth. 19The LORD saw and abhorred, because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters. 20He said, “I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end will be; for they are a very perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness. 21They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked me to anger with their vanities. I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. 22For a fire is kindled in my anger, that burns to the lowest Sheol, devours the earth with its increase, and sets the foundations of the mountains on fire. 23“I will heap evils on them. I will spend my arrows on them. 24They shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat and bitter destruction. I will send the teeth of animals on them, with the venom of vipers that glide in the dust. 25Outside the sword will bereave, and in the rooms, terror on both young man and virgin, the nursing infant with the gray-haired man. 26I said that I would scatter them afar. I would make their memory to cease from among men; 27were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy, lest their adversaries should judge wrongly, lest they should say, ‘Our hand is exalted; the LORD has not done all this.’” 28For they are a nation void of counsel. There is no understanding in them. 29Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! 30How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had delivered them up? 31For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves concede. 32For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, of the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poison grapes. Their clusters are bitter.

In the Song of Moses, God grieves over a people who forsook him for worthless gods. They sacrificed to demons, to new gods their fathers never knew. And most pointedly: of the Rock who bore you, you are unmindful; you have forgotten God who gave you birth. They traded the Rock, their solid foundation, for gods that were no rock at all, and the song declares plainly, their rock is not as our Rock, a truth even their enemies concede.

The image at the heart of this lament is God as the Rock, and the folly of forsaking him. God calls himself the Rock who bore Israel, gave them birth, held them firm; and the tragedy the song names is that they became unmindful of the Rock, forgot the God who was their foundation, and ran instead to other gods. But those substitutes were no rock; their rock is not as our Rock, the song says. They traded solid ground for something that could not hold them, exchanging the firm foundation of God for gods as unstable as the shifting sand. There is a warning here about our own tendency to forsake the Rock for lesser things. God is the solid foundation, the one who holds firm, on whom a life can be built and stand. And we, like Israel, are tempted to become unmindful of him, to forget the Rock, and to build instead on substitutes, other loves, other securities, other gods of our own choosing, that cannot bear the weight we put on them. When the storms come, the substitutes fail; they are not rock, and they cannot hold. Their rock is not as our Rock; nothing we forsake God for can do what he does, be the firm foundation that stands. Jesus drew the same picture: the wise build their house on the rock, and when the floods come, it stands; the foolish build on sand, and it falls. To forget the Rock and build our lives on substitutes is to build on sand; and the day of testing will show the difference. The call of the song is to remember the Rock, not to become unmindful of the God who is our foundation, not to trade the solid ground of God for the unstable substitutes that cannot hold us. Everything we might forsake him for is no rock; only God is the Rock on whom a life can stand.

Have I become unmindful of the Rock, forgetting the God who is my firm foundation, and built my life instead on substitutes, other loves and securities, that cannot bear the weight I put on them, and can I return to the Rock, remembering that nothing I forsake God for is a rock like our Rock, and that only he is the foundation on which a life can stand?

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