Deuteronomy 9-11

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

9 Hear, O Israel. You are to cross the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you are, cities great and fortified up to the heavens,

² A people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, Who can stand before the sons of Anak?

³ Know therefore this day that the Lord your God is He Who goes over before you as a devouring fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall dispossess them and make them perish quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

⁴ Do not say in your [mind and] heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out from before you, It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land—whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.

⁵ Not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your [minds and] hearts do you go to possess their land; but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out before you, and that He may fulfill the promise which the Lord swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

⁶ Know therefore that the Lord your God does not give you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a hard and stubborn people.

⁷ [Earnestly] remember and forget not how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness; from the day you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord.

⁸ Even in Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you.

⁹ When I went up the mountain to receive the tables of stone, the tables of the covenant which the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I neither ate food nor drank water.

¹⁰ And the Lord delivered to me the two tables of stone written with the finger of God; and on them were all the words which the Lord spoke with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.

¹¹ And at the end of forty days and forty nights the Lord gave me the two tables of stone, the tables of the covenant.

¹² And the Lord said to me, Arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made for themselves a molten image.

¹³ Furthermore the Lord said to me, I have seen this people, and behold, they are stubborn and hard.

¹⁴ Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens; 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 was burning with fire. And the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands.

¹⁶ And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made for yourselves a molten calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you.

¹⁷ I took the two tables, cast them out of my two hands, and broke them before your eyes.

¹⁸ Then I fell down before the Lord as before, for forty days and forty nights; I neither ate food nor drank water, because of all the sin you had 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 which the Lord held against you, enough to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also.

²⁰ And the Lord was very angry with Aaron, angry enough to have destroyed him, and I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.

²¹ And I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust; and I cast the dust of it into the brook that came down out of the mountain.

²² At Taberah also and at Massah and at 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 or trust and rely on Him or obey His voice.

²⁴ You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.

²⁵ So I fell down and lay prostrate before the Lord forty days and nights because the Lord had said He would destroy you.

²⁶ And I prayed to the Lord, O Lord God, do not destroy Your people and Your heritage, whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

²⁷ Remember [earnestly] Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or at their sin,

²⁸ Lest the land from which You brought us out say, Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which He promised them, and because He hated them, He has brought them out to slay 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.

10 At that time the Lord said to me, Hew two tables of stone like the first and come up to Me on the mountain and make an ark of wood.

² And I will write on the tables the words that were on the first tables which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.

³ So I [Moses] made an ark of acacia wood and hewed two tables of stone like the first, and went up the mountain ^[a]with the two tables of stone in my [one] hand.

⁴ And the Lord wrote on the tables as at the first writing, the Ten Commandments which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me.

⁵ And I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they are, as the Lord commanded me.

⁶ (The Israelites journeyed from the wells of the sons of Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died, and there he was buried, and Eleazar his son ministered in the priest’s office in his stead.

⁷ From there they journeyed to Gudgodah, and then to Jotbathah, a land of brooks [dividing the valley].

⁸ At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister to Him and to bless in His name unto this day.

⁹ Therefore Levi has no part or inheritance with his brethren; the Lord is his inheritance, as the Lord your God promised him.)

¹⁰ And I [Moses] stayed on the mountain, as the first time, forty days and nights, and the Lord listened to me at that time also; the Lord would not destroy you.

¹¹ And the Lord said to me, Arise, journey on before the people, that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give to them.

¹² And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but [reverently] to fear the Lord your God, [that is] to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your [mind and] heart and with your entire being,

¹³ To keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?

¹⁴ Behold, the heavens and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth also, with all that is in it and on it.

¹⁵ Yet the Lord had a delight in loving your fathers, and He chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day.

¹⁶ So circumcise the foreskin of your [minds and] hearts; be no longer stubborn and hardened.

¹⁷ For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, the terrible God, Who is not partial and takes no bribe.

¹⁸ He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger or temporary resident and gives him food and clothing.

¹⁹ Therefore love the stranger and sojourner, for you were strangers and sojourners in the land of Egypt.

²⁰ You shall [reverently] fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him and cling to Him, and by His name and presence you shall swear.

²¹ He is your praise; He is your God, Who has done for you these great and terrible things which your eyes have seen.

²² Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as the stars of the heavens for multitude.

11 Therefore you shall love the Lord your God and keep His charge, His statutes, His precepts, and His commandments always.

² And know this day—for I am not speaking to your children who have not [personally] known and seen it—the instruction and discipline of the Lord your God: His greatness, His mighty hand, and His outstretched arm;

³ His signs and His deeds which He did in Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt and to all his land;

⁴ And what He did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and chariots, how He made the waters of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day;

⁵ And what He did to you in the wilderness until you came to this place;

⁶ And what He did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up them, their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel.^(A)

⁷ For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord which He did.

⁸ Therefore you shall keep all the commandments which I command you today, that you may be strong and go in and possess the land which you go across [the Jordan] to possess,

⁹ And that you may live long in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.

¹⁰ For the land which you go in to possess is not like the land of Egypt, from which you came out, where you sowed your seed and watered it with your foot laboriously as in a garden of vegetables.

¹¹ But the land which you enter to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water of the rain of the heavens,

¹² A land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

¹³ And if you will diligently heed My commandments which I command you this day—to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your [mind and] heart and with your entire being—

¹⁴ I will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil.

¹⁵ And I will give grass in your fields for your cattle, that you may eat and be full.

¹⁶ Take heed to yourselves, lest your [minds and] hearts be deceived and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them,

¹⁷ And the Lord’s anger be kindled against you, and He shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the land will not yield its fruit, and you perish quickly off the good land which the Lord gives you.

¹⁸ Therefore you shall lay up these My words in your [minds and] hearts and in your [entire] being, and bind them for a sign upon your hands and as forehead bands between your eyes.

¹⁹ And you shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you rise up.

²⁰ And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and on your gates,

²¹ That your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.

²² For if you diligently keep all this commandment which I command you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to cleave to Him—

²³ Then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you shall dispossess nations greater and mightier than you.

²⁴ Every place upon which the sole of your foot shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the western sea [the Mediterranean] your territory shall be.

²⁵ There shall no man be able to stand before you; the Lord your God shall lay the fear and the dread of you upon all the land that you shall tread, as He has said to you.

²⁶ Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse—

²⁷ The blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day;

²⁸ And the curse if you will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you this day to go after other gods, which you have not known.

²⁹ And when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you go to possess, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.^(B)

³⁰ Are they not beyond the Jordan, west of the road, where the sun goes down, in the land of the Canaanites living in the Arabah opposite Gilgal, beside the oaks or terebinths of Moreh?

³¹ For you are to cross over the Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God gives you, and you shall possess it and live in it.

³² And you shall be watchful to do all the statutes and ordinances which I set before you this day.