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8 When the Most High[69] apportioned the nations,

      when he divided humankind,

      he fixed the boundaries of the peoples

according to the number of the gods;[70]

       ⁹ the LORD’s own portion was his people,

      Jacob his allotted share.

      CONSIDER THE YEARS LONG PAST

      In order to understand fully what Man’s power over Nature, and therefore the power of some men over other men, really means, we must picture the race extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors.

      —from The Abolition of Man

      For reflection

Deuteronomy 32:4–7

¹⁰ He sustained[71] him in a desert land,

      in a howling wilderness waste;

      he shielded him, cared for him,

      guarded him as the apple of his eye.

      ¹¹ As an eagle stirs up its nest,

      and hovers over its young;

      as it spreads its wings, takes them up,

      and bears them aloft on its pinions,

      ¹² the LORD alone guided him;

      no foreign god was with him.

      ¹³ He set him atop the heights of the land,

and fed him with[72] produce of the field;

      he nursed him with honey from the crags,

      with oil from flinty rock;

      ¹⁴ curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,

      with fat of lambs and rams;

      Bashan bulls and goats,

      together with the choicest wheat—

      you drank fine wine from the blood of grapes.

¹⁵ Jacob ate his fill;[73]

      Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked.

      You grew fat, bloated, and gorged!

      He abandoned God who made him,

      and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.

      ¹⁶ They made him jealous with strange gods,

      with abhorrent things they provoked him.

      ¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons, not God,

      to deities they had never known,

      to new ones recently arrived,

      whom your ancestors had not feared.

¹⁸ You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you;[74]

      you forgot the God who gave you birth.

¹⁹ The LORD saw it, and was jealous;[75]

he spurned[76] his sons and daughters.

      ²⁰ He said: I will hide my face from them,

      I will see what their end will be;

      for they are a perverse generation,

      children in whom there is no faithfulness.

      ²¹ They made me jealous with what is no god,

      provoked me with their idols.

      So I will make them jealous with what is no people,

      provoke them with a foolish nation.

      ²² For a fire is kindled by my anger,

      and burns to the depths of Sheol;

      it devours the earth and its increase,

      and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

      ²³ I will heap disasters upon them,

      spend my arrows against them:

      ²⁴ wasting hunger,

      burning consumption,

      bitter pestilence.

      The teeth of beasts I will send against them,

      with venom of things crawling in the dust.

      ²⁵ In the street the sword shall bereave,

      and in the chambers terror,

      for young man and woman alike,

      nursing child and old gray head.

²⁶ I thought to scatter them[77]

      and blot out the memory of them from humankind;

      ²⁷ but I feared provocation by the enemy,

      for their adversaries might misunderstand

      and say, “Our hand is triumphant;

      it was not the LORD who did all this.”

      ²⁸ They are a nation void of sense;

      there is no understanding in them.

      ²⁹ If they were wise, they would understand this;

      they would discern what the end would be.

      ³⁰ How could one have routed a thousand,

      and two put a myriad to flight,

      unless their Rock had sold them,

      the LORD had given them up?

      ³¹ Indeed their rock is not like our Rock;

      our enemies are fools.[77]

      ³² Their vine comes from the vinestock of Sodom,

      from the vineyards of Gomorrah;

      their grapes are grapes of poison,

      their clusters are bitter;

      ³³ their wine is the poison of serpents,

      the cruel venom of asps.

      ³⁴ Is not this laid up in store with me,

      sealed up in my treasuries?

      ³⁵ Vengeance is mine, and recompense,

      for the time when their foot shall slip;

      because the day of their calamity is at hand,

      their doom comes swiftly.

      ³⁶

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