Deuteronomy 9

¹ ‘Listen, Israel; today you are about to cross the Jordan, to go and dispossess nations greater and stronger than yourself, to capture great cities fortified to the sky.

² A people great and tall, these Anakim, as you know; you have heard the saying: Who can stand up to the sons of Anak?

³ Be therefore sure today that Yahweh your God himself will go in front of you, a devouring fire that will destroy them, and he himself will subdue them for you; so you will dispossess them and destroy them quickly as Yahweh has promised you.

⁴ Do not say in your heart, when Yahweh your God has driven them before you, “It is for my own goodness that Yahweh has brought me to possession of this land”; when it is for their wickedness that Yahweh dispossesses these nations for you.

⁵ It is not for any goodness or sincerity of yours that you are entering their land to possess it; no, it is for the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh your God is dispossessing them for you, and to keep the word that he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

⁶ Be in fact sure, then, that it is not for any goodness of yours that Yahweh gives you this rich land to possess, for you are a headstrong people.

⁷ ‘Remember; never forget how you provoked Yahweh your God in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt you have been rebels against Yahweh.

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

⁹ I had gone up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that Yahweh was making with you. I stayed forty days and forty nights on the mountain, eating no bread, drinking no water.

¹⁰ Yahweh gave me the two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God, and all the words on them that Yahweh had spoken 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, after he had given me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant,

¹² Yahweh said to me, “Leave this place, go down quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have broken faith. They have been quick to leave the way I marked out for them; they have made themselves an idol of cast metal.”

¹³ Then Yahweh said to me, “I have seen this people, and what a headstrong people they are!

¹⁴ Let me destroy them, and wipe out their name from under heaven, and make out of you a nation mightier and greater than they.”

¹⁵ ‘So I went down the mountain again and it was blazing with fire, and in my hands were the two tablets of the covenant.

¹⁶ And I looked and there you were, you had been sinning against Yahweh your God. You had made yourself a calf of cast metal; you had been quick to leave the way Yahweh marked out for you.

¹⁷ I seized the two tablets and with my two hands threw them down and broke them before your eyes.

¹⁸ Then I fell prostrate before Yahweh; as before, I passed forty days and forty nights eating no bread and drinking no water, for all the sin you had committed in doing what was displeasing to Yahweh, thus arousing his anger.

¹⁹ For I was afraid of this anger, of the fury which so roused Yahweh against you that he was ready to destroy you. And once more Yahweh heard my prayer.

²⁰ Yahweh was enraged with Aaron too and was ready to destroy him, and I pleaded for Aaron also.

²¹ That work of sin, the calf you had made, I took and burned and broke to pieces, and grinding it to fine dust I threw its dust into the stream that comes down from the mountain.

²² ‘At Taberah too and at Massah and Kibroth-hattaavah you provoked Yahweh.

²³ And when Yahweh wanted you to leave Kadesh-barnea, saying, “Go up and take possession of the land I have given you”, you rebelled against the command of Yahweh your God and did not believe him or listen to his voice.

²⁴ You have been rebels against Yahweh from the day he first knew you.

²⁵ ‘So I fell prostrate before Yahweh and lay there these forty days and forty nights, for Yahweh had said he would destroy you.

²⁶ And I pleaded with Yahweh. My Lord Yahweh, I said, do not destroy your people, your heritage whom in your greatness you have redeemed, whom you have brought out of Egypt with your mighty hand.

²⁷ Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; take no notice of this people’s stubbornness, their wickedness, and their sin,

²⁸ so that it may not be said in the land from which you brought us, “Yahweh was not able to bring them to the land he promised them. It was because he hated them that he brought them out, to die in the wilderness.”

²⁹ But they are your people and your heritage whom you brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm.