Deuteronomy 31:21 Meaning It Will Happen

Anusaya: Latent tendency A disposition can sit in a person for years without showing. They are still camped east of the river, having done nothing yet, and their ways today are already known: the bent toward turning away is banked in them like embers under ash, needing only air. Vineyards they did not plant and houses they did not build will be the air.

Kamma: Action and its fruit Deeds carry their own results, so the troubles that find them need no assigning from outside. Many evils and troubles come on them by the road they walk themselves, and the words can be set down here on the near bank because a harvest is legible in the sowing. Moses composes the ending while the sowing is still going on.

Dukkha: Suffering Trouble travels with the people who carry it. Milk and honey wait on the far bank, and so do the many evils and troubles that come on them there; the ground where the promise is kept is the same ground where the grief happens. A song for the worst days is put in their hands on one of the best.

Sati: Remembering Memory of this kind returns at the moment it is useful. A song lodges in the mouth in a way a scroll on a shelf does not: it comes back by itself over grinding grain or on a walk, and it is still in the mouths of grandchildren who never stood in Moab. By the time the evils arrive, they have been singing a description of their own situation for years, and they recognize it.

Ottappa: Moral dread Weight given to what wrongdoing brings will check a person. Testimony here is carried in their own throats, so singing is stating their own case against themselves, and a charge you keep repeating in your own voice is hard to shake off. It works ahead of the trouble as well: whoever sings what comes of turning away has been told the price while there is still time to change course.