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This week our parasha is Ha’Azinu which translates to “Listen” and covers Deuteronomy 32.  Parasha Ha’Azinu is a very unique and special parasha.  Ha’Azinu is also the penultimate parasha and contains the final teaching and warning of Moses for our people.   This teaching that Moses was commissioned to write by the Lord takes the form of a song and was written down as part of the Law and kept inside the Ark of the Covenant. With this song we move from the history of our people to our future disobedience and destruction at the hands of other nations, but the song ends with a promise of future restoration and atonement.  So let us examine the Song of Moses and consider the timeless lessons the Lord had recorded for all generations.

Our context for this song is found in the previous chapter of Deuteronomy.  In Deuteronomy 31 the Lord commissioned the writing of this song to be a witness and a warning for when we rebelled against Him and turned to false gods, after the death of Moses.

When we asked why disasters of all kinds were happening to us in the land of Israel, this song would stand as an answer.  Moses wrote this song in a single day and gathered our people together to hear his words.  We are told that this song is our life and that we should diligently teach it to our children.  With the words of this teaching we would prosper or fail in the land of Israel.

The song begins with Moses poetically summoning Heaven and Earth to hear his words.  Moses then describes the Lord as HaTzur, The Rock, a title and theme reinforced repeatedly in this song.  When we think of the Lord as the Rock, it should not be a pebble or stone that comes to mind, but a mighty unmoving mountain. King David in Psalm 18:2 explains what it means to call the Lord our Rock: “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. “ The Lord is our place of refuge, an unmoving and unchanging foundation for those who are His people.

Moses continues to expound on the nature of our God who is our Rock. His nature and His actions are always just.  He is a God of faithfulness and justice who is completely sinless.   Moses calls on us to remember our history, and to remember that the Lord chose us from every other nation to be His people.  In every way the Lord cared for us and provided for our needs through our wilderness journey to the Promised Land.  Moses tells of how we will experience every blessing of the Lord, enjoying the harvest of the Land we are about to enter.  But this song also prophetically declares our future rebellion against the Lord.

After experiencing every good thing from Adonai we became rebellious and satisfied.  With our needs provided for, we abandoned our Creator, and rejected the Rock who is our Savior.  We turned to false idols offering sacrifices and worship.  These were new idols of our own creation, false gods like the golden calf created to serve our rebellious ways.

In response to our rebellion the Lord distanced Himself from our people and decided that if we would anger him with idols then He would use the other nations to punish the nation of Israel. We then experienced the great anger of the Lord which is described as a consuming fire that has the strength to consume all the Earth. The fire of the Lord’s anger is described as burning all the way down to Sheol, burning the entire Earth, and setting fire to mountains.  Just as the Lord’s kindness, mercy, and love are above and beyond anything we human beings contain, so is the anger and justice of the Lord.

The song continues with the prophecy of the exiles where nations and natural disasters would destroy our people.  From famine to vipers to swords cutting down young and old alike, every type of horrible disaster is prophesied about in this song. But the Lord did not completely destroy our people so that other nations would not think it was by their strength that they were able to defeat us in battle.

Our enemies did not understand they were only victorious because our Rock, our foundation, had allowed it to happen.  Though the Lord used other nations to punish our people, they still did not know Him and were incredibly wicked.

Their rock, their idols and false gods, are not the same as our Rock.  The wickedness of our enemies would soon lead to their destruction which would come soon.

The destruction of our enemies would happen when we finally repented and turned back to the Lord. When we were broken, when we realized that our false gods could not save us, He would relent.  The Lord’s terrible anger burned against us, but the God who is a consuming fire is also a God of love.  At this time we would truly understand who our Rock is, as the Lord Himself declares in verse 39:

See now that I, even I, am he,

and there is no god beside me;

I kill and I make alive;

I wound and I heal;

and there is none that can deliver out of my hand

This is the one true God; this is the Rock of our salvation.  The creator of the heavens and the Earth, who has the power over life and death and whose will can never be stopped.  The Lord declares that He will cut down all those who are His enemies, that He will repay all those who hate Him.  All the enemies of God who come against His people will experience His judgment.

The final verse of this song looks even more towards the future, to a day where the nations of the Earth will rejoice with the Jewish people as the Lord Himself makes atonement for our sins. Adonai will also take vengeance on those who hate Him and His people.  So the Song of Moses concludes then on this hopeful note for those who belong to the Lord:

Rejoice, you nations, with his people,

for he will avenge the blood of his servants;

he will take vengeance on his enemies

and make atonement for his land and people.

What are we to remember from this song today?  One of the lasting lessons from the song of Moses is that the Lord is not passive or distant from humanity.  The creator of the universe is no impersonal force, no unintelligible spirit, and certainly does not sit idly by while human beings worship idols of their own creation.

This song makes it clear that to experience fellowship, blessing, and life; we must be in a right relationship with Adonai.  If we choose to follow idols and not the Lord we will experience the judgment that comes with such a choice, the entirety of God’s Word gives evidence to this truth. And let’s be clear that idols do not have to be made from wood or stone.  In our age we are capable of creating new idols very easily.  We create idols from celebrities, money, things, philosophies, and from ourselves.  Whenever we give something else other than God priority in our lives we are worshipping an idol of our own creation.

This song ends with the statement that the Lord will repay those who hate Him, but will also bring atonement.  The anger and justice of the Lord is as overwhelming as His love and mercy.

The Lord has made atonement possible through Messiah Yeshua.  For those who desire to know God and become loyal to Him, a way has been made possible through His sinless sacrifice and resurrection.  The Messiah taught that those who reject Him, reject the source of eternal life.  They will face an eternal judgment greater than any of the judgments described in this parasha.

There are only two choices, choosing to follow the Lord, or choosing not to.  In God’s Word we see the end result of each choice. Each one of us therefore has to make a choice, to consider the Word of God and decide where we will place our loyalties. What choice have you made?

I pray that the Lord would cause us to return to Him, to make each of us aware of His revealed will and to choose Life.  May each one of us set aside the idols of our lives and place our trust in the faithful and eternal Rock who is our savior and atonement.