20 A Song of the Rock

Refrain:

AllThe word is very near to you;
it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.

1Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;
and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

2May my teaching drop as the rain,
my speech distil as the dew,
as the gentle rain on the grass,
and as the showers upon the meadow.

3For I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
Ascribe greatness to our God!

4The Rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are just:
a faithful God without deceit, just and upright is he.

5His degenerate children have dealt corruptly with him;
a perverse and crooked generation.

6Do you thus repay the Lord, you foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your father, who created you,
who made you and established you?

7Remember the days of old, consider the years long past;
ask your father, and he will show you;
your elders, and they will tell you.

8When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided the children of earth,
he fixed the bounds of the peoples
according to the number of the children of God.

9For the Lord’s own portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.

10He sustained him in a desert land,
in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he shielded him and cared for him;
he kept him as the apple of his eye.

11As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young,
spreading out its wings, takes them,
and bears them aloft on its pinions,

12So the Lord alone did guide him,
and no foreign god was with him.

Deuteronomy 32.1-12

AllGlory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and shall be for ever. Amen.

AllThe word is very near to you;
it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.