“You foolish people, so lacking in wisdom,
is this how you repay Adonai?
He is your father, who made you his!
It was he who formed and prepared you!“
-Deuteronomy 32:6
From verse 6, the fatherly criticism the Lord has been directing towards His children begins to intensify and heat up.
“After all I’ve done for you!
Is this how you treat me?”
The accusation being leveled against Israel is quite shocking.
Moses tells the people…
…”You foolish people, so lacking in wisdom…”.
What’s the reasoning behind this seeming insult?
Here’s the thing.
Israel knows and fully recognizes that it was HASHEM who created them and brought them into existence.
They are fully cognizant of the fact that they are a unique people who have been separated from every other gentile nation on earth.
Yet, in spite of being aware of this fact, they treat their Father in Heaven as if the opposite is true, as though the Lord of Hosts is not their Father in heaven.
And because of this Moses is pointing his finger at the children of Israel and asking them…
…”Are you freakin’ nuts?” (that’s a paraphrase).
“Why would you cut off the hand that not only feeds you but keeps you alive to this very day?”...is Moses’ reasoning.
Let’s move on to verse 7.
“Remember how the old days were;
think of the years through all the ages.
Ask your father — he will tell you;
your leaders too — they will inform you.”
Here Moses is hearkening back to the history of Israel’s blessings.
However, he is NOT asking the people to think all the way back to the days of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob).
Rather, he’s asking them to think back about one generation when they were in slaving away in the furnace known as Egypt.
Moses is telling this younger second generation of Israelites “don’t just believe MY testimony about what the Lord did for us”.
“Ask your fathers” he says.
Ask those who actually witnessed God’s strong hand in the form of the 10 plagues against Egypt.
They will tell you how God rescued them from Pharaoh, led them to freedom, kept them alive in the desert wilderness and handed down the Covenant at Sinai.
Onward.
Let’s take a look at verse 8.
“When ‘Elyon gave each nation its heritage,
when he divided the human race,
he assigned the boundaries of peoples
according to Israel’s population;
but Adonai’s share was his own people,
Ya‘akov his allotted heritage.”
In this verse, Moses is claiming that the foundation for the awesome Exodus event goes all the way back to the days of old when the Almighty assigned the nations their dwelling territories on the earth and…
…how after the Great Flood, HASHEM divided what was just ONE race that spoke only ONE language and then broke them up into many nations and scattered them all over the face of the planet (the Tower of Babel incident).
Therefore, all one has to do is inquire of the elders who are the story-tellers and tradition keepers for Israel and thus know they can have confidence that the Lord will do what He has indeed promised He will do…
…now and in the world to come.
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