Deuteronomy
Chapter Nine
1 ¶ "Hear, O
Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations
greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven,
2 "a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know,
and of whom you heard it said, 'Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?'
3 "Therefore understand today that the LORD your God is He who goes over
before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before
you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said
to you.
4 "Do not think in your heart, after the LORD your God has cast them out
before you, saying, 'Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in
to possess this land'; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations
that the LORD is driving them out from before you.
5 "It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart
that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these
nations that the LORD your God drives them out from before you, and that He
may fulfill the word which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob.
6 "Therefore understand that the LORD your God is not giving you this good
land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people.
7 ¶ "Remember! Do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to
wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt
until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.
8 "Also in Horeb you provoked the LORD to wrath, so that the LORD was angry
enough with you to have destroyed you.
9 "When I went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the
tablets of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I stayed on the mountain
forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water.
10 "Then the LORD delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the
finger of God, and on them were all the words which the LORD had spoken to you
on the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.
11 "And it came to pass, at the end of forty days and forty nights, that
the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.
12 "Then the LORD said to me, 'Arise, go down quickly from here, for your
people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly; they have quickly
turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made themselves
a molded image.'
13 "Furthermore the LORD spoke to me, saying, 'I have seen this people,
and indeed they are a stiff-necked people.
14 'Let Me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under
heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.'
15 "So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain burned
with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.
16 "And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the LORD your God-had
made for yourselves a molded calf! You had turned aside quickly from the way
which the LORD had commanded you.
17 "Then I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and
broke them before your eyes.
18 "And I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty
nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you
committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger.
19 "For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD
was angry with you, to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me at that time
also.
20 "And the LORD was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him;
so I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.
21 "Then I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with
fire and crushed it and ground it very small, until it was as fine as dust;
and I threw its dust into the brook that descended from the mountain.
22 "Also at Taberah and Massah and Kibroth Hattaavah you provoked the LORD
to wrath.
23 "Likewise, when the LORD sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, 'Go up
and possess the land which I have given you,' then you rebelled against the
commandment of the LORD your God, and you did not believe Him nor obey His voice.
24 "You have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew
you.
25 "Thus I prostrated myself before the LORD; forty days and forty nights
I kept prostrating myself, because the LORD had said He would destroy you.
26 "Therefore I prayed to the LORD, and said: 'O Lord GOD, do not destroy
Your people and Your inheritance whom You have redeemed through Your greatness,
whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
27 'Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look on the stubbornness
of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin,
28 'lest the land from which You brought us should say, "Because the LORD
was not able to bring them to the land which He promised them, and because He
hated them, He has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness."
29 'Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out by Your
mighty power and by Your outstretched arm.'
Go to Chapter Ten
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