Deuteronomy
Chapter 9
1 Listen, Israel: Today you will cross the Jordan to take over lands with bigger and stronger nations than you, and cities with tall, strong walls.
2 A great and tall nation, the descendants of the Anakims, whom you know and have heard about, saying, “Who can stand against the children of Anak?”
3 Know today that God, your God, is the one leading you. Like a fire, he will destroy your enemies, defeating them as you watch. You will quickly drive them out and destroy them, just as God has told you.
4 Do not think in your heart, after God has driven them out from before you, ‘It is because of my goodness that God has let me take this land.’ Instead, it’s because of the evil of these nations that God is removing them from your path.
5 You are not going to take over their land because you are righteous or have a pure heart; you are doing it because these nations are wicked, and God wants to remove them for you. This will fulfill the promise God made to your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 Know then that God is not giving you this good land to own because of your goodness; you are a stubborn people.
7 Remember and don’t forget how you made God angry in the desert. From the time you left Egypt until you arrived here, you have been disobedient to God.
8 At Horeb, you made God very angry, so much that he wanted to destroy you.
9 I went up the mountain to get the stone tablets, the ones of the agreement that God made with you. I stayed on the mountain for 40 days and nights, without eating bread or drinking water.
10 God gave me two stone tablets written by God’s finger; they had all the words God spoke to you on the mountain from within the fire on the day we gathered.
11 After 40 days and 40 nights, God gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the agreement.
12 God told me, “Get up and go down fast from here because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have ruined themselves; they quickly left the path I ordered them to follow; they’ve made an idol out of melted metal.”
13 God spoke to me and said, “I have seen these people, and they are stubborn.”
14 Leave me alone, so I can destroy them and erase their name from under heaven, and I will create from you a nation stronger and greater than them.
15 I turned and came down from the mountain, which was burning with fire, holding the two stone tablets of the agreement in my hands.
16 I saw that you sinned against God by making a metal calf; you quickly left the path God had ordered you to follow.
17 I took the two tablets, threw them from my hands, and broke them in front of you.
18 I bowed down before God for forty days and nights, just as before, not eating bread or drinking water, because of all the wrongs you did, making God angry.
19 I was scared of God’s anger and fury, which could have led to your destruction, but God listened to me then too.
20 God was very angry with Aaron and wanted to destroy him, but I also prayed for Aaron at that time.
21 I took the calf idol you made, which was your sin, burned it in fire, crushed it, and ground it into fine dust; then I threw the dust into the stream that flowed down the mountain.
22 At Taberah, at Massah, and at Kibrothhattaavah, you made God very angry.
23 Also, when God sent you from Kadeshbarnea, saying, “Go and take the land I have given you,” you did not obey God’s command, and you did not trust or listen to Him.
24 You have been against God since I first knew you.
25 So I lay prostrate before God for forty days and nights, just like the first time, because God had said he would destroy you.
26 I prayed to God and said, “O God, do not destroy your people, your own possession, whom you saved by your power, whom you brought out of Egypt with a strong hand.”
27 God, remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and do not pay attention to this people’s stubbornness, wickedness, or sin.
28 So that the people from the land we were taken from don’t say, ‘God couldn’t take them to the land he promised, and because he hated them, he took them out to kill them in the desert.’
29 They are your people and your heritage, whom you brought out with your great power and your outstretched arm.