Deuteronomy 9:23-10:5

Common English Bible

²³ And then, when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, telling you: “Go up and take possession of the land that I’m giving you,” you disobeyed the Lord your God’s command. You didn’t trust him. You didn’t obey God’s voice. ²⁴ You’ve been rebellious toward the Lord from the day I^[a] met you.

Moses’ intercessory prayer

²⁵ But I fell on my knees in the Lord’s presence forty days and forty nights, lying flat out, because the Lord planned on wiping you out. ²⁶ But I prayed to the Lord! I said: Lord, my Lord! Don’t destroy your people, your own possession, whom you saved by your own power, whom you brought out of Egypt with a strong hand! ²⁷ Remember your servants: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! Don’t focus on this people’s stubbornness, wickedness, and sin. ²⁸ Otherwise, that land out of which you brought us will say: The Lord wasn’t strong enough to bring them into the land he’d promised them. Because he didn’t care for them in the least, he brought them out to die in the desert. ²⁹ But these are your people! Your own possession! The people you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm!

New tablets

10 At that time the Lord told me: Carve two stone tablets, just like the first ones, and hike up the mountain to me. Construct a wooden chest as well. ² I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets—the ones you smashed—then you will place them in the chest.

³ So I built a chest out of acacia wood and carved two stone tablets just like the first ones. Then I hiked up the mountain holding the two tablets in my hands. ⁴ God wrote on the new tablets what had been written on the first set: the Ten Commandments that the Lord spoke to you on the mountain, from the very fire itself, on the day we assembled there. Then the Lord gave them to me.

⁵ So I came back down the mountain. I put the tablets in the chest that I’d made, and that’s where they are now, exactly as the Lord commanded me.