Beginning
8 Be conscientious about carrying out the entire body of commands that I am giving you today so that you may thrive and increase and you may go in and possess the land that the Lord promised by oath to give to your fathers. 2 Remember the whole journey on which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you and to test you, in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. 3 So he humbled you and allowed you to be hungry. Then he fed you manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known before, in order to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 The clothes you wore did not wear out, and your feet did not swell these forty years. 5 So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 Therefore you are to keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by revering him.
7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of gullies filled with water, a land with springs and groundwater that flows out into the valleys and down the mountains, 8 a land with wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees for oil, and honey,[a] 9 a land where you can eat bread and not be poor, where you will not lack anything, a land whose rocks are iron and from whose mountains you can mine copper.
10 Then you will eat, and you will be filled, and you will praise the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you. 11 Be very careful so that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and ordinances and his statutes that I am commanding you today. 12 When you eat and are satisfied, and you build nice houses and move into them, 13 and your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold increase, and everything that you have prospers, 14 watch out so that your heart does not become arrogant and forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you were slaves. 15 Do not forget the Lord, who led you in the great and terrifying wilderness, where there were venomous snakes and scorpions, where the thirsty ground had no water, but the Lord made water come out of a flint rock for you. 16 Do not forget the Lord, who in the wilderness fed you manna, which your fathers had not known before, to humble you and to test you so that it would be good for you later on.
17 You might say in your heart, “My ability and the power of my hand have earned this wealth for me.” 18 But then you are to remember that the Lord your God is the one who gives you the ability to produce wealth, to confirm his covenant that he promised to your fathers with an oath, as he does to this day.
19 But if you ever do forget the Lord your God and you follow other gods, and if you serve them and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will certainly perish. 20 Just like the nations that the Lord is about to destroy in front of you, you also will perish, because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God.
9 Listen, Israel, today you are about to cross the Jordan to go in and to take possession of nations larger and stronger than you, nations with large cities that have fortified walls reaching up to the skies, 2 with people strong and tall, the Anakites, whom you know and about whom you have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the descendants of Anak?”
3 So know today that the Lord your God himself is crossing over in front of you. Like a consuming fire he will destroy them, and he will subdue them before you. You will take possession of their land and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord promised you.
4 When the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say in your heart, “Because of my righteousness the Lord brought me in to take possession of this land,” when actually it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is handing over their land to you.
5 You are not entering to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart, but because of the wickedness of these nations. The Lord your God is handing over their land to you, in order to confirm the promise that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 Know, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, because a stiff-necked people[b] is what you are. 7 Remember and do not forget how you made the Lord your God angry in the wilderness. From the day that you went out of the land of Egypt until your arrival at this place, you have been rebels against the Lord. 8 Even at Horeb you made the Lord angry. Yes, the Lord was angry enough at you to destroy you.
9 When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I did not eat bread and I did not drink water. 10 Then the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken with you from the middle of the fire on the mountain, on the day of the assembly. 11 At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.
12 Then the Lord said to me, “Get moving and go down quickly from here because your people, whom you led out of Egypt, have acted corruptly. They have turned away quickly from the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a thing of molten metal.”
13 The Lord also said to me, “I have seen these people, and what a stiff-necked people they are! 14 Leave me alone, and I will destroy them. I will blot out their name from under the heavens, and I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.”
15 So I turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in my two hands, while the mountain was burning with fire.
16 I saw how you were sinning against the Lord your God by making for yourselves a calf from molten metal and by quickly turning aside from the way that the Lord your God had commanded you to go.
17 I grabbed the two tablets and I threw them from my two hands[c] and I shattered them right before your eyes.
18 Then I lay facedown before the Lord forty days and forty nights like the first time. I did not eat bread and I did not drink water, because of all the sin that you committed by doing evil in the eyes of the Lord and making him angry.
19 I was afraid of the heated anger of the Lord, who was angry enough at you to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me again at that time.
20 The Lord was even angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. So I prayed also for Aaron at that time.
21 Then I took that wicked thing that you had made, the calf. I burned it with fire and crushed it by grinding it until it was as fine as dust. Then I threw its dust into the gully that goes down from the mountain.
22 Again and again, at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth Hatta’avah, you made the Lord angry.
23 Then, when the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, and he said, “Go up and take possession of the land that I have given to you,” you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You did not put your faith in him, and you did not obey him. 24 You have been rebels against the Lord ever since I have known you.
25 So I lay facedown before the Lord for forty days and forty nights. I lay facedown because the Lord said he would destroy you. 26 So I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord God, do not destroy your people, your inheritance that you have redeemed by your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt with a strong hand.
27 “Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of these people and at their wickedness and their sin. 28 Otherwise the land out of which you brought us will say, ‘This happened because the Lord did not have the power to bring them to the land that he had promised to them, or this happened because he hated them and brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.’
29 “But they are your people and your possession, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.”
10 At that time the Lord said to me, “Cut out two tablets of stone like the first ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark[d] out of wood. 2 Then I will write on the tablets the same words that were on the first ones that you shattered, and you are to put them in the ark.”
3 So I made an ark of acacia wood and I cut out two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. 4 He wrote on the tablets the same writing as on the first tablets, the Ten Commandments[e] that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the middle of the fire, on the day of the assembly. Then the Lord gave them to me. 5 I turned and came back down the mountain, and I put the tablets in the ark that I had made. There they are kept, as the Lord commanded me to do.
6 The people of Israel traveled from Be’eroth Bene Ja’akan to Moserah. Aaron died there, and he was buried there, and Eleazar his son served as priest in his place. 7 From there they traveled to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land of gullies filled with water.
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 and to serve him, and to pronounce a blessing in his name, as they do to this day. 9 That is why Levi did not have an allotment of land and an inheritance with his brothers. The Lord himself is their inheritance, as the Lord your God promised him.
10 I had stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights like the first time, and the Lord listened to me again on this second occasion. The Lord agreed not to destroy you. 11 So the Lord said to me, “Set out and continue the journey at the head of the people, and they will enter and take possession of the land that I promised to give them with an oath to their fathers.”
12 So now, Israel, what is the Lord your God asking of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes that I am commanding you today for your own good.
14 Indeed, the heavens and the heaven of heavens,[f] the earth and everything that is on it—these belong to the Lord your God. 15 Still, the Lord attached himself to your fathers, loved them, and he chose their descendants after them (that’s you!) from all peoples, as it is today.
16 So cut away the tough shell of your sinful nature,[g] and do not be stubborn any longer.
17 The Lord your God is God of Gods and Lord of Lords, the great God, the mighty one and the awesome one, who does not show favoritism and does not take a bribe. 18 He carries out justice for the fatherless and widows. He loves the alien who dwells among you and gives him food and clothing. 19 So you are to love the alien, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
20 Fear the Lord your God, serve him, cling to him, and take your oaths in his name.
21 He is your glory. He is your God, who performed for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.
22 When your fathers went down to Egypt, they numbered seventy people, but now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of the sky.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.