Beginning

Chapter 8

The Lord’s Kindness.^1 [a]Be diligent in observing all of the commandments that I am giving you today, so that you might live and multiply, and so that you might enter and take possession of the land that the Lord promised to your fathers. ² Remember how the Lord, your God, guided your path through the wilderness for these forty years, abasing you and testing you so that he might know what was in your heart, whether or not you would observe his commandments. ³ He brought you low, allowing you to suffer from hunger. He then fed you with manna, something with which your fathers were not familiar, so that you might come to know that man does not live by bread alone,^[b] but man lives by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.

⁴ Throughout these forty years your clothing did not wear out nor did your feet swell. ⁵ Thus you could understand that the Lord, your God, was disciplining you, just like a father disciplines his son. ⁶ Therefore, observe the commandments of the Lord, your God. Walk in his ways and fear him. ⁷ The Lord, your God, is bringing you into a good land, a land filled with brooks, fountains, and springs that rush forth from the valleys and the hills. ⁸ It is a land of wheat and barley, of vines, fig trees and pomegranates, a land with olive oil and honey. ⁹ It is a land in which you will not lack bread to eat; you will not lack anything at all. It is a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper.

¹⁰ Warning about Prosperity. When you have eaten your fill and are satisfied, then praise the Lord, your God, for the good land that he has given you. ¹¹ Take heed not to forget the Lord, your God, by not observing his commandments, decrees, and statutes that I have given you today. ¹² Otherwise, when you have eaten your fill and you have built fine houses and are living in them ¹³ and your herds and your flocks have grown large, and your silver and your gold have multiplied, in fact all that you own has multiplied, ¹⁴ then your heart might become proud and you will forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the land of your slavery. ¹⁵ He led you through a vast and terrible wilderness where there were snakes and fiery scorpions and thirst, where when there was no water he brought water forth from the hard rock for you. ¹⁶ He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something with which your fathers were not familiar, to abase you and to test you, so that later on it might go well with you.

^17 [c]You might think to yourself, “It is through my strength and the might of my own hand that I have acquired this wealth.” ¹⁸ But remember the Lord, your God, for it is he who has given you the ability to acquire this wealth so that he might confirm the covenant that he made with your fathers, which is still in force today. ¹⁹ But if you forget the Lord, your God, and follow after other gods, serving and worshiping them, then I swear to you today that you will surely perish. ²⁰ You will perish just like the nations that the Lord crushed in your sight, for you would not have been attentive to the voice of the Lord, your God.

Chapter 9

Israel’s Good Fortune. ¹ Hear, O Israel, today you are going to pass over the Jordan to dispossess nations more powerful than you are which have large cities whose walls reach up into the heavens. ² The people are strong and tall, descendants of the Anakim. You know all about them, for you have heard it said, “Who can stand up against the Anakim?”

³ Understand, therefore, that the Lord, your God, is crossing over ahead of you like a devouring fire today. He will destroy them and bring them low before you. Therefore, you will be able to drive them out and annihilate them quickly, just as the Lord has promised you. ⁴ After the Lord, your God, has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “It was because of my righteousness that the Lord brought me in to take possession of this land.” It is because of the wickedness of the nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. ⁵ It is not because of your righteousness or the sincerity of your heart that you are going to take possession of their land. Rather, it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord, your God, will drive them out before you, fulfilling the promise that he made to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ⁶ Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord, your God, is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked^[d] people.

The Golden Calf. ⁷ Remember, and never forget, how you angered the Lord, your God, in the wilderness from the day that you left the land of Egypt until the day that you arrived here. You have always been rebellious. ⁸ At Horeb you made the Lord so angry that the Lord was angry enough to destroy you. ⁹ When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord had made with you, I stayed up upon the mountain for forty days and forty nights, neither eating food nor drinking water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me two stone tablets on which the finger of God had written all of the things that the Lord had said to you on the mountain from the midst of the flames on the day of the assembly. ¹¹ At the end of forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. ¹² Then the Lord said to me, “Arise, hurry down, for your people whom you brought forth out of Egypt has become perverse. They have quickly turned aside from the path that I had directed them to follow and they have made a molten image for themselves.”

¹³ Furthermore, the Lord also said to me, “I have observed this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people. ¹⁴ Leave me alone, so I can destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens. I will make you a greater and more numerous nation than they are.”

¹⁵ So I turned and climbed down the mountain that was blazing with fire, carrying the two tablets of the covenant in my two hands. ¹⁶ I looked out, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord, your God. You had made a molten calf for yourselves. How quickly you had turned away from the path in which the Lord had directed you. ¹⁷ I took the two tablets and with my two hands cast them down and broke them before your eyes. ¹⁸ Then I fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and for forty nights.^[e] I did not eat food nor did I drink water on account of all the sins you had committed, doing what was so evil in the sight of the Lord that you provoked him to anger. ¹⁹ I feared the anger and the wrath of the Lord, for he was angry enough at you to destroy you. Yet, the Lord once again listened to me.

²⁰ The Lord was angry enough at Aaron to kill him, but I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. ²¹ I took that sinful thing, the calf that you had made, and I burned it in the fire. I crushed it and ground it so fine that it was like a powder, and I threw that powder into the stream that came down from the mountain. ²² You also angered the Lord at Taberah, at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah. ²³ Then when the Lord sent you forth from Kadesh-barnea, saying to you, “Go up and take possession of the land that I have given to you,” you despised the command of the Lord, your God. You did not trust him nor listen to his voice. ²⁴ You have despised the Lord from the first day that I knew you.

²⁵ I fell down and lay prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights because the Lord said that he was going to destroy you. ²⁶ I prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, God, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance, whom you redeemed by your great power, and whom you brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not consider the stubbornness of this people nor the wickedness of their sin. ²⁸ Otherwise, the people of the land from which you brought them will say, ‘The Lord brought them out and put them to death in the desert because he was not able to bring them into the land that he had promised them and also because he hated them.’ ²⁹ Yet, they are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out with your great power and your outstretched arm.”

Chapter 10

The Stone Tablets. ¹ The Lord then also told me, “Carve out two stone tablets like the first ones, and come up to me on the mountain. You are also to make an Ark out of wood. ² I will engrave the words that had been on the first tablets that you broke on these tablets. Then you are to place them in the Ark.”

³ I made an Ark out of acacia wood and carved out two tablets like the first ones and climbed up the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. ⁴ He wrote on the tablets what he had written on the previous ones, the ten commandments that the Lord had proclaimed to you on the mountain from the midst of the flames on the day of the assembly. The Lord then gave them to me. ⁵ I climbed down the mountain and placed the tablets in the Ark that I had made, as the Lord had commanded, and they are still there today.

⁶ The Israelites traveled from the wells of Bene-jaakan to Moserah.^[f] There Aaron died, and he was buried there. Eleazer, his son, succeeded him as priest. ⁷ From there they traveled to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land filled with streams of water. ⁸ It was at this time that the Lord set aside the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant, to stand before the Lord to minister to him, and to pronounce blessings in his name, as they do until the present. ⁹ That is why the Levites have no share in the inheritance with their brethren; the Lord is their inheritance, as the Lord, your God, promised them.

¹⁰ Once again I stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, like the first time, and the Lord heard me once again, for the Lord decided not to destroy you. ¹¹ The Lord said to me, “Rise up, proceed on your journey ahead of the people so that they might go in and take possession of the land that I promised to their fathers to give them.”

¹² God’s Steadfast Love.^[g]And so now, O Israel, what does the Lord, your God, require of you but to fear the Lord, your God, to walk in all of his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord, your God, with all your heart and all your soul, ¹³ and to observe the commandments and the statutes that I am giving you today for your own good. ¹⁴ Indeed the heavens and the highest heavens^[h] belong to the Lord, your God, as well as the earth and all that is in it, ¹⁵ yet the Lord’s sole delight was in your fathers. He loved them so much that he chose you, their descendants, above every other nation, which is still true today.

¹⁶ Therefore, circumcise the foreskin of your hearts, and stop being stiff-necked,^{[i] 17} for the Lord, your God, is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, a great God, mighty and awesome, who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. ¹⁸ He ensures justice for the orphan and the widow, and demonstrates his love for the foreigner by giving him food and clothing. ¹⁹ So now, show your love to the foreigner, for you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.

²⁰ You shall fear the Lord, your God, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him, taking your oaths by his name. ²¹ He is your glory, and he is your God. He has performed great and awesome wonders for you, deeds he performed before your very eyes. ²² Seventy of your ancestors went down into Egypt. Now the Lord, your God, has multiplied you so that you are as numerous as the stars in the sky.