⁷ The Lord did not set His ^(A)love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were ^(B)the least of all peoples; ⁸ but ^(C)because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep ^(D)the oath which He swore to your fathers, ^(E)the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of ^[a]bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

⁹ “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, ^(F)the faithful God ^(G)who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

^4 (A)“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 ^(B)because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out from before you. ^5 (C)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 ^[a]fulfill the ^(D)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 ^(E)stiff-necked^[b] people.

⁷ “Remember! Do not forget how you ^(F)provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. ^(G)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 ^(H)in Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, so that the Lord was angry enough with you to have destroyed you. ^9 (I)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 ^(J)forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. ^10 (K)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 ^(L)in^[c] 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, ^(M)‘Arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly; they have ^(N)quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made themselves a molded image.’

¹³ “Furthermore ^(O)the Lord spoke to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed ^(P)they are a ^[d]stiff-necked people. ^14 (Q)Let Me alone, that I may destroy them and ^(R)blot out their name from under heaven; ^(S)and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

^15 (T)“So I turned and came down from the mountain, and ^(U)the mountain burned with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶ And ^(V)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 ^(W)broke them before your eyes. ¹⁸ And I ^(X)fell^[e] 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 (Y)For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was angry with you, to destroy you. ^(Z)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 ^(AA)threw its dust into the brook that descended from the mountain.