Bible Strands
Deuteronomy 32:16
They provoked His jealousy with foreign gods; they enraged Him with abominations.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Moses addresses the Israelites during his final song, forecasting their future apostasy after they become prosperous in the promised land.
The words — יַקְנִא֖וּ/הוּ (yak.ni.'u./hu) translates literally as "they made jealous him," and יַכְעִיסֻֽ/הוּ (yakh.'i.Su./hu) means "they provoked to anger him."
The thread — The motif of provoking divine jealousy through idolatry appears in Psalms 78:58 and 1 Corinthians 10:22, while Leviticus 18:27 connects the same foreign practices to land defilement.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that spiritual abandonment follows material prosperity and requires immediate rejection of any rival allegiance.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger.
Cross-references
- Psalms 78:58 They enraged Him with their high places and provoked His jealousy with their idols.
- 1 Corinthians 10:22 Are we trying to provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?
- Leviticus 18:27 For the men who were in the land before you committed all these abominations, and the land has become defiled.
- Deuteronomy 5:9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
- Deuteronomy 7:25 You must burn up the images of their gods; do not covet the silver and gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it; for it is detestable to the LORD your God.
- 1 Kings 14:22 And Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and by the sins they committed they provoked Him to jealous anger more than all their fathers had done.
- 2 Kings 23:13 The king also desecrated the high places east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.
- Nahum 1:1 This is the burden against Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite: