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The Command to Leave Sinai

33 The Lord said to Moses, “Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’(A) I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.(B) Go up[a] to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”(C)

When the people heard these harsh words, they mourned, and no one put on ornaments.(D) For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, and I will decide what to do to you.’ ” Therefore the Israelites stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

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Footnotes

  1. 33.3 Heb lacks Go up

The Example of Abraham

What then are we to say was gained by[a] Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.(A) For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed[b] God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”(B) Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due.(C) But to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. So also David pronounces a blessing on those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works:

“Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven
    and whose sins are covered;(D)
blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.”

Is this blessing, then, pronounced only on the circumcised or also on the uncircumcised? We say, “Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.” 10 How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith[c] while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe[d] without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them,(E) 12 and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.

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Footnotes

  1. 4.1 Other ancient authorities read say about
  2. 4.3 Or trusted in
  3. 4.11 Or trust
  4. 4.11 Or trust