Yahweh's Case Against His People
1 Listen now to what Yahweh says: “Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear what you have to say. 2 Hear, you mountains, Yahweh’s indictment, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for Yahweh has a case against his people, and he will contend with Israel. 3 My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me! 4 For I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage. I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 5 My people, remember now what Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of Yahweh.”
The third address is a lawsuit in which the plaintiff opens by inviting the defendant to state the charge against him.
The mountains and the enduring foundations of the earth are called as the panel, which is a way of saying the witnesses predate both parties. What is brought is a case — the Hebrew noun and its verb both belong to legal dispute — and the defendant is his own people.
Verse 3 gives the chapter its force. Instead of an indictment, a question: my people, what have I done to you, how have I wearied you, answer me. The one with the grievance asks to be accused first. Nothing suggests this is rhetorical fencing; it is offered as genuinely open, and the silence that follows is the answer.
The recital in verses 4 and 5 is the evidence, and it runs where such recitals run — the land of EGYPT, redemption from a house of slaves, three leaders named with Miriam beside her brothers. Then a stranger item: what Balak planned and what Balaam answered, and the road from Shittim to Gilgal.
That last is chosen with care. It is the one occasion in the recital when the danger was invisible to the people it threatened — a king hiring a curse they never heard, on a road they walked without knowing. The evidence for God's righteous acts includes the rescues nobody noticed at the time.
settled What this mark means