Summary of the Parasha
The parasha is almost entirely a song (shirah), written in the Torah scroll in two columns, like bricks laid one on another. Moses calls the heavens and the earth as witnesses: “Give ear, O heavens… may my teaching drop like rain, my speech distill like dew”. He proclaims God’s justice: “The Rock, His work is perfect, all His ways are justice”, and rebukes the people: “Is this how you repay Hashem, foolish and unwise people?”
He invites everyone to remember history: “Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will say to you”. When God divided the nations, He set their borders according to the number of the children of Israel, “for Hashem’s portion is His people”. He found them in a desert land, surrounded them, guarded them “like the apple of His eye”, “like an eagle that stirs up its nest” and carries its young on its wings. He fed them honey from the rock and oil from the flinty stone.
But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked: in abundance, he forgot his Rock for new gods. God “will hide His face”, and misfortunes will come: hunger, war, dispersion. Yet He will not destroy Israel, “lest the enemy say: our hand prevailed”. “See now that I, I am He, and there is no god with Me: I put to death and I give life”. The song ends with vengeance on the enemies and atonement for the land and the people.
Moses and Hoshea (Joshua) recite the song before the people. Moses adds: “It is not an empty thing for you; it is your life”. That same day, God tells Moses to climb Mount Nebo, see the land of Canaan from afar and die there, as Aaron died on Mount Hor, because of Mei Merivah. According to the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 31a), the Levites sang this song in the Temple every Shabbat, divided into six parts whose initials spell “HaZIV LaCh”.
Summary of the Haftara
“Vaydaber David” (“And David spoke”)
Text in II Samuel 22:1–51
At the end of his life, David sings of the day God saved him from all his enemies and from Saul: “Hashem is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer”. He describes his distress, “the cords of death surrounded me”, then God’s intervention, grand as a storm: the earth shakes, God descends on the wings of the wind. “With the kind You are kind, with the wholehearted You are wholehearted.” The song ends with the verse said at the end of Birkat Hamazon: “Migdol yeshuot malko, He gives great salvation to His king and shows kindness to His anointed, to David and his descendants forever.”
Parasha-Haftara Connection
Two songs at the end of a life, sung by Israel’s two greatest leaders, Moses and David. Both call God “the Rock”, speak of the eagle or the wings of the wind, and tell a whole story of deliverance. When Haazinu falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Shabbat Shuvah haftara is read instead.