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17 Yet they kept on sinning against him,
    rebelling against the Most High in the desert.

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10 But they rebelled against him
    and grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he became their enemy
    and fought against them.

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16 And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard his voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? 18 And to whom was God speaking when he took an oath that they would never enter his rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed him? 19 So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest.

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13 Yet how quickly they forgot what he had done!
    They wouldn’t wait for his counsel!
14 In the wilderness their desires ran wild,
    testing God’s patience in that dry wasteland.
15 So he gave them what they asked for,
    but he sent a plague along with it.
16 The people in the camp were jealous of Moses
    and envious of Aaron, the Lord’s holy priest.
17 Because of this, the earth opened up;
    it swallowed Dathan
    and buried Abiram and the other rebels.
18 Fire fell upon their followers;
    a flame consumed the wicked.

19 The people made a calf at Mount Sinai[a];
    they bowed before an image made of gold.
20 They traded their glorious God
    for a statue of a grass-eating bull.
21 They forgot God, their savior,
    who had done such great things in Egypt—
22 such wonderful things in the land of Ham,
    such awesome deeds at the Red Sea.
23 So he declared he would destroy them.
    But Moses, his chosen one, stepped between the Lord and the people.
    He begged him to turn from his anger and not destroy them.

24 The people refused to enter the pleasant land,
    for they wouldn’t believe his promise to care for them.
25 Instead, they grumbled in their tents
    and refused to obey the Lord.
26 Therefore, he solemnly swore
    that he would kill them in the wilderness,
27 that he would scatter their descendants[b] among the nations,
    exiling them to distant lands.

28 Then our ancestors joined in the worship of Baal at Peor;
    they even ate sacrifices offered to the dead!
29 They angered the Lord with all these things,
    so a plague broke out among them.
30 But Phinehas had the courage to intervene,
    and the plague was stopped.
31 So he has been regarded as a righteous man
    ever since that time.

32 At Meribah, too, they angered the Lord,
    causing Moses serious trouble.

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Footnotes

  1. 106:19 Hebrew at Horeb, another name for Sinai.
  2. 106:27 As in Syriac version; Hebrew reads he would cause their descendants to fall.

The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah,
    as they did at Massah in the wilderness.
For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
    even though they saw everything I did.
10 For forty years I was angry with them, and I said,
‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me.
    They refuse to do what I tell them.’

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32 But in spite of this, the people kept sinning.
    Despite his wonders, they refused to trust him.

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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. 14 Leave me alone so I may destroy them and erase their name from under heaven. Then I will make a mighty nation of your descendants, a nation larger and more powerful than they are.’

15 “So while the mountain was blazing with fire I turned and came down, holding in my hands the two stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant. 16 There below me I could see that you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had melted gold and made a calf idol for yourselves. How quickly you had turned away from the path the Lord had commanded you to follow! 17 So I took the stone tablets and threw them to the ground, smashing them before your eyes.

18 “Then, as before, I threw myself down before the Lord for forty days and nights. I ate no bread and drank no water because of the great sin you had committed by doing what the Lord hated, provoking him to anger. 19 I feared that the furious anger of the Lord, which turned him against you, would drive him to destroy you. But again he listened to me. 20 The Lord was so angry with Aaron that he wanted to destroy him, too. But I prayed for Aaron, and the Lord spared him. 21 I took your sin—the calf you had made—and I melted it down in the fire and ground it into fine dust. Then I threw the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.

22 “You also made the Lord angry at Taberah,[a] Massah,[b] and Kibroth-hattaavah.[c]

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Footnotes

  1. 9:22a Taberah means “place of burning.” See Num 11:1-3.
  2. 9:22b Massah means “place of testing.” See Exod 17:1-7.
  3. 9:22c Kibroth-hattaavah means “graves of gluttony.” See Num 11:31-34.

Even at Mount Sinai[a] you made the Lord so angry he was ready to destroy you.

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Footnotes

  1. 9:8 Hebrew Horeb, another name for Sinai.

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