Deuteronomy 32 - Introduction

The Song

Though not comparable to other masterpieces of Hebrew poetry either for beauty of metaphor, or musical diction, or fineness of spiritual insight, this strong poem is distinguished by the fire, force, and sweep of its superb rhetoric. Granted its limits for it is neither an epic nor a lyric, but a didactic ode addressed with a practical purpose to a sinful generation it has no peer in the O.T.

The editor of the Pent., who has ascribed it to Moses (Deuteronomy 31:30; cp. Deuteronomy 32:19; Deuteronomy 32:22, these wordsin Deuteronomy 32:28, and the possible reading songinstead of lawin Deuteronomy 32:24), asserts that its main purpose is to testify beforehand against Israel; whereas the poem itself strikes its keynote (Deuteronomy 32:2) as one of mercy and of hope, and emphatically concludes on this keynote (Deuteronomy 32:34-43). The poem makes no claim to be by Moses, and reflects nothing of his time or circumstances. On the contrary it is addressed throughout to a generation at a remote distance from Israel's origin in the desert (Deuteronomy 32:7-12). Not only is their carriage to, and settlement upon, the Land long past (Deuteronomy 32:13 f.); but they have become demoralised by their enjoyment of the wealth of the Land, succumbed to strange gods, forsaken Jehovah, and suffered His chastisements, which are described exactly as by the earlier prophets as a series of national calamities, famine, plague, pestilence, and wild beasts, culminating in war and defeat at the hands of a new and alien people (Deuteronomy 32:15-25). So worthless are they that Jehovah would have destroyed them but for the fear that the arrogant foe would vaunt this as his own work. Therefore He relents and turns His wrath upon the foe; Israel's deliverance is near, their blood will be avenged and their land assoiled (Deuteronomy 32:26-43).

The evidence of the Song is thus clearly of a date far subsequent to Moses. The only question is to which of the many sufferings of the long settled people we are to assign it. As to this the data are in conflict.

Some critics are satisfied that the period of the Syrian wars alone suits the effects of the divine wrath reflected in the Song (Knobel, Dillm., etc.); they compare Deuteronomy 32:36 with 2 Kings 14:26, emphasise the absence of all threat of Exile, argue for the identity of the no-peoplewho execute God's anger on Israel with the Syrians, and explain the number of words in the Song not found elsewhere (see below) as due to its northern origin. Others have identified the no-peoplewith the Assyrians, either at the time of the fall of Samaria (Reuss) or during the invasion of Sennacherib; to which the objection is reasonable that Deuteronomy 32:40 f. do not suit the Assyrians, and that there is no threat of Exile, an essential part of the Assyrian policy towards defeated enemies, as all the prophets of the period recognise. On the grounds of the literary affinities of the Song with Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the exilic -Isaiah" 40 55, and the Wisdom literature, more recent critics have brought it down to the Babylonian Exile, some to the eve or beginning of this (Kuen., Dri., etc.), others to its end on the ground that the deliverance of Israel is near (Steuern., Moore, the Oxford Hex., Berth., Robinson, and Marti). The no-peoplewould thus be the Chaldeans.

The literary reasons for an exilic date are not slight (see notes). But on the other hand, there is the absence of reference to exile as the culmination of the apostate Israel's punishment. Is it possible to conceive that an exilic poet could have ignored the Exile? The present writer thinks not. If the author of the Song be really echoing Jer., Ez., and the exilic -Isaiah," it is all the more strange that he does not speak of banishment or captivity. The only theory which would reconcile this conflict between the literary phenomena of the Song and its reflection of circumstances upon which exile does not lower, is that an exilic writer composed it with exclusive reference to a generation far earlier than his own, which is not unlikely when we consider the early subjects of certain late Psalms; or else that a poem originally written before the Assyrian period of Israel's history received additions from an exilic scribe, for the affinities with Ez. and the exilic -Isaiah" are not many.

The rhythm is one frequent in Heb. poetry: parallel couplets with, in the main, three stresses or accents to each line, but as in other O.T. poems of the same structure there are a considerable number of lines with only two stresses, and occasionally there is one of four, though this may not be original but due to bad tradition of the text. As Heb. especially by virtue of its verbal suffixes can express by one word with one accent ideas or feelings which it takes two or three to express in English, the rhythmical translation offered below is only a rough approximation to the metre of the original. As in many Heb. poems, there is no division into strophes. The rush of the rhetoric does not allow of this. The divisions given below are simply for the sake of convenience.