Deuteronomy 9

¹ “Listen, Israel: today you are crossing the Jordan to enter and drive out nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities fortified up to the sky.

² They are a great and tall people, the descendants of the Anakim. You know them, and you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand against the descendants of Anak?’

³ Know today that the LORD your God is the one who goes ahead of you like a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them under your power. So you will drive them out and make them perish quickly, as the LORD told you.

⁴ When the LORD your God drives them out before you, do not say in your heart, ‘The LORD brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’ It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you.

⁵ You are not entering to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart. It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, and to uphold the word that the LORD swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

⁶ Know, then, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.

⁷ Remember; do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to anger in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have rebelled against the LORD.

⁸ At Horeb you provoked the LORD to anger, and the LORD was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you.

⁹ When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water.

¹⁰ The LORD gave me the two stone tablets, written with the finger of God. On them were all the words that the LORD spoke to you on the mountain, from the midst of the fire, on the day of the assembly.

¹¹ At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the LORD gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant.

¹² The LORD said to me, ‘Get up, go down from here quickly, because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them and have made themselves an image of cast metal.’

¹³ The LORD also said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed they are a stubborn people.

¹⁴ Leave me alone, and I will destroy them and wipe out their name from under the sky. I will make you a nation stronger and more numerous than they are.’

¹⁵ So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire. The two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.”

¹⁶ “I looked and saw that you had sinned against the LORD your God: you had made yourselves a cast-metal calf. You had quickly turned aside from the way the LORD had commanded you.

¹⁷ So I took the two tablets, threw them from my two hands, and smashed them before your eyes.

¹⁸ Then I threw myself down before the LORD as I had the first time, for forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water. I did this because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the LORD’s sight and provoking him to anger.

¹⁹ For I was afraid of the anger and fury with which the LORD was furious with you, ready to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me that time too.

²⁰ The LORD was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him, and at that time I prayed for Aaron too.

²¹ I took your sin, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. I crushed it and ground it thoroughly until it was fine as dust, then threw its dust into the stream that runs down from the mountain.

²² You also provoked the LORD to anger at Taberah, at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah.

²³ When the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea, he said, ‘Go up and take possession of the land I have given you.’ But you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You did not trust him or listen to his voice.

²⁴ You have rebelled against the LORD from the day I first knew you.

²⁵ So I threw myself down before the LORD for those forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said he would destroy you.

²⁶ I prayed to the LORD and said, ‘Lord GOD, do not destroy your people and your inheritance, whom you redeemed by your greatness and brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

²⁷ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of this people, or at their wickedness or their sin.

²⁸ Otherwise the land from which you brought us will say, “The LORD was not able to bring them into the land he promised them, and because he hated them, he brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.”

²⁹ They are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm.’”

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