Deuteronomy 9:25-10:11

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

²⁵ “Throughout the forty days and forty nights that I lay prostrate before the Lord when the Lord intended to destroy you,^{(A) 26} I prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Lord God, do not destroy your people, your very own possession, whom you redeemed in your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.^{(B) 27} Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; pay no attention to the stubbornness of this people, their wickedness and their sin, ²⁸ lest the land from which you have brought us say, “Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them and because he hated them, he has brought them out to let them die in the wilderness.” ²⁹ For they are your people, your very own possession, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.’^(C)

The Second Pair of Tablets

10 “At that time the Lord said to me, ‘Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood.^{(D) 2} I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark.’^{(E) 3} So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand.^{(F) 4} Then he wrote on the tablets the same words as before, the ten commandments^[a] that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me.^{(G) 5} So I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made, and there they are, as the Lord commanded me.”^(H)

⁶ (The Israelites journeyed from Beeroth-bene-jaakan^[b] to Moserah. There Aaron died, and there he was buried; his son Eleazar succeeded him as priest.^{(I) 7} From there they journeyed to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land with flowing streams.^{(J) 8} At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister to him and to bless in his name, to this day.^{(K) 9} Therefore Levi has no allotment or inheritance with his kindred; the Lord is his inheritance, as the Lord your God promised him.)^(L)

¹⁰ “I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, as I had done the first time. And once again the Lord listened to me. The Lord was unwilling to destroy you.^{(M) 11} The Lord said to me, ‘Get up, go on your journey at the head of the people, that they may go in and occupy the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them.’