In this Shabbat’s weekly Torah portion Ha’Azinu Deuteronomy 32:1 – 32:52, the greater part of the Torah reading of Haazinu (“Listen In”) consists of a 70-line “song” delivered by Moses to the people of Israel on the last day of his earthly life.

Calling heaven and earth as witnesses, Moses exhorts the people, “Remember the days of old / Consider the years of many generations / Ask your father, and he will recount it to you / Your elders, and they will tell you” how God “found them in a desert land,” made them a people, chose them as His own, and bequeathed them a bountiful land. The song also warns against the pitfalls of plenty—“Yeshurun grew fat and kicked / You have grown fat, thick and rotund / He forsook God who made him / And spurned the Rock of his salvation”—and the terrible calamities that would result, which Moses describes as God “hiding His face.” Yet in the end, he promises, God will avenge the blood of His servants, and be reconciled with His people and land.