³ Go up to this land that flows with milk and honey. But I will not travel among you, for you are a stubborn and rebellious people. If I did, I would surely destroy you along the way.”

⁹ Then the Lord said, “I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are. ¹⁰ Now leave me alone so my fierce anger can blaze against them, and I will destroy them. Then I will make you, Moses, into a great nation.”

⁸ So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites now live.

⁶ You must recognize that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land because you are good, for you are not—you are a stubborn people.

Remembering the Gold Calf

⁷ “Remember and never forget how angry you made the Lord your God out in the wilderness. From the day you left Egypt until now, you have been constantly rebelling against him. ⁸ Even at Mount Sinai^[a] you made the Lord so angry he was ready to destroy you. ⁹ This happened when I was on the mountain receiving the tablets of stone inscribed with the words of the covenant that the Lord had made with you. I was there for forty days and forty nights, and all that time I ate no food and drank no water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me the two tablets on which God had written with his own finger all the words he had spoken to you from the heart of the fire when you were assembled at the mountain.

¹¹ “At the end of the forty days and nights, the Lord handed me the two stone tablets inscribed with the words of the covenant. ¹² Then the Lord said to me, ‘Get up! Go down immediately, for the people you brought out of Egypt have corrupted themselves. How quickly they have turned away from the way I commanded them to live! They have melted gold and made an idol for themselves!’

¹³ “The Lord also said to me, ‘I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are.

⁵¹ “You stubborn people! You are heathen^[a] at heart and deaf to the truth. Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? That’s what your ancestors did, and so do you!

¹³ “Now listen to this, and announce it throughout all Israel,^[a]” says the Lord, the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies.

¹³ When I tell righteous people that they will live, but then they sin, expecting their past righteousness to save them, then none of their righteous acts will be remembered. I will destroy them for their sins. ¹⁴ And suppose I tell some wicked people that they will surely die, but then they turn from their sins and do what is just and right. ¹⁵ For instance, they might give back a debtor’s security, return what they have stolen, and obey my life-giving laws, no longer doing what is evil. If they do this, then they will surely live and not die. ¹⁶ None of their past sins will be brought up again, for they have done what is just and right, and they will surely live.

⁵ I said this so I could keep my promise to your ancestors to give you a land flowing with milk and honey—the land you live in today.’”

Then I replied, “Amen, Lord! May it be so.”

⁶ The Israelites had traveled in the wilderness for forty years until all the men who were old enough to fight in battle when they left Egypt had died. For they had disobeyed the Lord, and the Lord vowed he would not let them enter the land he had sworn to give us—a land flowing with milk and honey.

⁴⁵ “Get away from all these people so that I can instantly destroy them!” But Moses and Aaron fell face down on the ground.