I will publish the name of the Lord; literally, I will call, i.e. proclaim, or celebrate, etc. Ascribe ye greatness unto our God. The hearers of the song are summoned to join in the celebration of the Divine majesty. The word rendered" greatness" occurs only in this book (Deuteronomy 3:24; Deuteronomy 5:21; Deuteronomy 9:26; Deuteronomy 11:2), and in Psalms 150:2. It is the greatness of God as the Almighty that is here celebrated.
He is the Rock, his work is perfect; rather, The Rock! his work is perfect, i.e. blameless, without fault. God is called "the Rock" ( הַצוּר), as the unchangeable Refuge and Stronghold of his people, by which they are sustained, and to which they can resort for defense and protection at all times. The epithet is applied to God four times besides in this song (Deuteronomy 32:15, Deuteronomy 32:18, Deuteronomy 32:30, Deuteronomy 32:31); it occurs also frequently in the Psalms (cf. Psalms 19:14; Psalms 28:1; Psalms 31:2, Psalms 31:3; Psalms 62:2, Psalms 62:7; etc.). The Hebrew word, tsur, cur or zur, appears in several proper names of the Mosaic period, as e.g. Pedahzur, "Rock delivers" (Numbers 1:10), a name of the same import as Pedahel, "God delivers" (Numbers 34:28); Elizur, "God is a Rock" (Numbers 1:5); Zuriel (Numbers 3:35) and Zurishaddai, "the Almighty is Rock" (Numbers 1:6; Numbers 2:12). "Jehovah," says Baumgarten, "is here called Rock, without any qualification, the reason is that he is the only true rock, and all the strength and firmness of earth's stones is but an ectype of his unchangeable faithfulness and rectitude. If one cleaves to the dualism of spirit and nature, and regards the figure as a merely subjective, arbitrary union of the two, such an expression is simply unintelligible; but if we would understand Scripture and religious speech, we must with all earnestness accustom ourselves to recognize the spiritual ground in nature, and apprehend this in the Biblical expression." It is remarkable that none of the ancient versions have retained this epithet here. The LXX. have θεὸς: the Vulgate, Deus ("Dei opera"); the Targum of Onkelos, תַּקִיפָא, "Mighty;" while the Peshito has simply the pronoun "his" appended to "works," see word. For all his ways are judgment; i.e. accordant with rectitude (cf. Psalms 145:17). A God of truth; rather, of faithfulness ( אְמֶוּנָת, from אָמַן, to stay, or be stayed, to be firm). They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. Of this difficult passage the following seems the best construction and rendering:—A perverse and crooked generation not his children, [but] their spot—has become corrupt towards him. The subject of the verb at the beginning of the verse is the "perverse and crooked generation," at the end of it, and between the verb and its subject there is interjected parenthetically the clause, "not his children, but their spot." Spot is here used in a moral sense, as in Job 11:15; Job 31:7; Proverbs 9:7. These corrupt persons claimed to be children of God, but they were not; they were rather a stain and a reproach to them (cf. 2 Peter 2:13; Isaiah 1:4). The rendering above given is substantially that of De Wette, Knobel, Keil, and Herxheimer, by all of whom the "perverse generation "is regarded as the subject of the sentence. This is the view adopted also in the 'Speaker's Commentary.' Some would make "God" the subject, and render, "He hath corrupted to him, or to himself" (margin, Authorized Version; Ibn Ezra, etc.). Others take "spot" as the subject, thus: "Their spot or blemish hath corrupted before him children not his" (Lowth, Dathe); but such renderings are forced, and proceed on constructions of the text which are illegitimate. Donaldson, following Lowth's construction, appeals to בָּנִים לאֹ אֵמֻן בָּם (verse 20) as a similar inversion. But the two cases are not parallel. To make them so, we must have here בָנָיו לאֹ מוּם בָּם, "his children in whom is no spot." Ewald takes מוּמֶה as the noun here, instead of מוּם, and tracing it to the Syriac, see Arabic word, juravit, renders "to him they, his not sons, have corrupted their oath," i.e. have broken it; and this Furst approves. But the phrase, "to corrupt an oath" is unexampled in the Old Testament, and there is no ground for changing the noun. The ancient versions vary considerably here: LXX; ἡμάρτοσαν οὐκ αὐτῷ τέκνα μωμητά: Aq; διέφθειραν αὐτῷ οὐκ δι υἱοὶ αὐτου: Sym; διέφθειραν πρὸς αὔτον οὐχ οἱυἱοι τὸ σύνολον: Vulgate, peccaverunt ei et non filii ejus in sordibus; Vert. Itala; peeca verunt non ei filii maculati; Syriac, "They corrupted but not him, children of defilement." These various renderings indicate that probably the text is and has long been corrupt. Some of the older English versions are worth noting on this verse. Rogers [Matthew], "The frowarde and overthwart generation hath marred them selves to himward, and are not his sonnes for their deformitie's sake;" Bishop's Bible, "Frowardly have they done agaynst him by their vices, not being his own children, but a wicked and froward generation;" Geneva Version, "They have corrupted themselves towards him by their vice, not being his children, but a froward and crooked generation."
Instead of gratefully acknowledging the Divine beneficence, and dutifully obeying the Divine will, Israel had perversely and foolishly requited the Lord for all his benefits, by apostasy from him. Do ye thus requite? The verb here signifies primarily to do to any one either good or evil, whether in return for what he has done or not (cf. Genesis 1:15; 1 Samuel 24:18; Proverbs 3:30); then, as a secondary meaning, to reward, repay, requite, as here and Psalms 18:21. To bring more forcibly to their view the ingratitude and folly of their conduct, Moses dwells upon what God was and had been to the nation: their Father, in that he had, in his love, chosen, them to be his people (cf. Isaiah 63:16; Isaiah 64:7; Malachi 2:10); their Purchaser, who had acquired possession of them by delivering them out of Egypt (cf. Psalms 74:2); their Maker, who had constituted them a nation; and their Establisher, by whom they had been conducted through the wilderness and settled in Canaan. Days of old; the times of Israel's deliverance from bondage, and the times during which successive generations had lived and experienced the goodness of the Lord. The form of the word rendered "days" is poetical, and is found only here and in Psalms 90:15, which is also ascribed to Moses. The years of many generations; literally, years of generation and generation; "aetatum singularum annos" (Rosenmüller).
From the very beginning, when God first allotted to the nations a place and a heritage, he had respect in his arrangements to the sons of Israel, who were his portion, and had as it were kept their interest in view in all that he appointed and ordered. According to the number of the children of Israel. When the Most High portioned out to the nations the heritage of each, he reserved for Israel, as the people of his choice, an inheritance proportioned to its numbers. The LXX. has "according to the number of the angels of God," an arbitrary departure from the original text, in accommodation, probably, to the later Jewish notion of each nation having its guardian angel. The Lord's portion is his people (cf. Exodus 15:16; Exodus 19:5; 1 Samuel 10:1; Psalms 78:71). The lot of his inheritance; literally, the cord, etc; the allusion being to the measuring of land by a cord, equivalent to the portion by measure which Jehovah allotted to himself as his inheritance (cf. Psalms 16:6).