Chronological

Chapter 8

God’s Care. ¹ Be careful to observe this whole commandment^(A) that I enjoin on you today, that you may live and increase, and may enter in and possess the land which the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. ² Remember how for these forty years the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the wilderness,^(B) so as to test you by affliction, to know what was in your heart: to keep his commandments, or not. ³ He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna,^(C) a food unknown to you and your ancestors, so you might know that it is not by bread alone^[a] that people live, but by all that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ The clothing did not fall from you in tatters, nor did your feet swell these forty years.^{(D) 5} So you must know in your heart that, even as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord, your God, disciplines you.^{(E) 6} Therefore, keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, by walking in his ways and fearing him.

Cautions About Prosperity. ^7 (F)For the Lord, your God, is bringing you into a good country, a land with streams of water, with springs and fountains welling up in the hills and valleys, ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, of olive trees and of honey, ⁹ a land where you will always have bread and where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones contain iron and in whose hills you can mine copper. ¹⁰ But when you have eaten and are satisfied, you must bless the Lord, your God, for the good land he has given you. ^11 (G)Be careful not to forget the Lord, your God, by failing to keep his commandments and ordinances and statutes which I enjoin on you today: ¹² lest, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built fine houses and lived in them, ¹³ and your herds and flocks have increased, your silver and gold has increased, and all your property has increased, ¹⁴ you then become haughty of heart and forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that house of slavery; ¹⁵ he guided you through the vast and terrible wilderness with its saraph^[b] serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; he brought forth water for you from the flinty rock^{(H) 16} and fed you in the wilderness with manna, a food unknown to your ancestors, that he might afflict you and test you, but also make you prosperous in the end. ¹⁷ Otherwise, you might say in your heart,^(I) “It is my own power and the strength of my own hand that has got me this wealth.” ¹⁸ Remember then the Lord, your God, for he is the one who gives you the power to get wealth, by fulfilling, as he has now done, the covenant he swore to your ancestors. ¹⁹ But if you do forget the Lord, your God, and go after other gods, serving and bowing down to them,^(J) I bear witness to you this day that you will perish utterly. ²⁰ Like the nations which the Lord destroys before you, so shall you too perish for not listening to the voice of the Lord, your God.

Chapter 9

Unmerited Success. ¹ Hear, O Israel! You are now about to cross the Jordan to enter in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than yourselves, having large cities fortified to the heavens,^{(K) 2} the Anakim, a people great and tall.^(L) You yourselves know of them and have heard it said of them, “Who can stand up against the Anakim?” ³ Know, then, today that it is the Lord, your God, who will cross over before you as a consuming fire; he it is who will destroy them and subdue them before you, so that you can dispossess and remove them quickly, as the Lord promised you.^{(M) 4} After the Lord, your God, has driven them out of your way, do not say in your heart, “It is because of my justice the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,^(N) and because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord is dispossessing them before me.”^{[c] 5} No, it is not because of your justice or the integrity of your heart that you are going in to take possession of their land; but it is because of their wickedness that the Lord, your God, is dispossessing these nations before you and in order to fulfill the promise he made on oath to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.^{(O) 6} Know this, therefore: it is not because of your justice that the Lord, your God, is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.^(P)

The Golden Calf. ⁷ Remember and do not forget how you angered the Lord, your God, in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious toward the Lord.^{(Q) 8 (R)}At Horeb you so provoked the Lord that he was angry enough to destroy you,^{(S) 9} when I had gone up the mountain to receive the stone tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you.^(T) Meanwhile I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate no food and drank no water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me the two stone tablets inscribed, by God’s own finger,^(U) with a copy of all the words that the Lord spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. ¹¹ Then, at the end of the forty days and forty nights, when the Lord had given me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant, ^12 (V)the Lord said to me, Go down from here now, quickly, for your people whom you have brought out of Egypt are acting corruptly; they have already turned aside from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a molten idol. ¹³ I have seen now how stiff-necked this people is, the Lord said to me. ¹⁴ Let me be, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens. I will then make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.

¹⁵ When I had come down again from the blazing, fiery mountain, with the two tablets of the covenant in both my hands,^{(W) 16} I saw how you had sinned against the Lord, your God, by making for yourselves a molten calf. You had already turned aside from the way which the Lord had commanded you.^{(X) 17} I took hold of the two tablets and with both hands cast them from me and broke them before your eyes.^{(Y) 18} Then, as before, I lay prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no food, I drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed in the sight of the Lord, doing wrong and provoking him.^{(Z) 19} For I dreaded the fierce anger of the Lord against you: his wrath would destroy you.^(AA) Yet once again the Lord listened to me. ²⁰ With Aaron, too, the Lord was deeply angry, and would have destroyed him; but I prayed for Aaron also at that time.^{(AB) 21} Then, taking the calf, the sinful object you had made, I burnt it and ground it down to powder as fine as dust, which I threw into the wadi that went down the mountainside.^(AC)

²² At Taberah, at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah likewise, you enraged the Lord.^{(AD) 23} And when the Lord sent you up from Kadesh-barnea saying, Go up and take possession of the land I have given you, you rebelled against this command of the Lord, your God, and would not believe him or listen to his voice.^{(AE) 24} You have been rebels against the Lord from the day I first knew you.

^25 (AF)Those forty days, then, and forty nights, I lay prostrate before the Lord, because he had threatened to destroy you. ²⁶ And I prayed to the Lord and said: O Lord God, do not destroy your people, the heritage you redeemed in your greatness and have brought out of Egypt with your strong hand.^{(AG) 27} Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look upon the stubbornness of this people nor upon their wickedness and sin,^{(AH) 28} lest the land from which you have brought us say, “The Lord was not able to bring them into the land he promised them, and out of hatred for them, he brought them out to let them die in the wilderness.”^{(AI) 29} They are your people and your heritage, whom you have brought out by your great power and with your outstretched arm.^(AJ)

Chapter 10

^1 (AK)At that time the Lord said to me, Cut two stone tablets like the first ones^(AL) and come up the mountain to me. Also make an ark out of wood. ² I will write upon the tablets the words that were on the tablets that you broke, and you shall place them in the ark. ³ So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two stone tablets like the first ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand.^{(AM) 4 (AN)}The Lord then wrote on the tablets, as he had written before, the ten words^[d] that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me. ⁵ Then I turned and came down from the mountain, and placed the tablets in the ark I had made.^(AO) There they have remained, as the Lord commanded me.

^6 (AP)The Israelites set out from Beeroth Bene-jaakan for Moserah; Aaron died there and was buried. His son Eleazar succeeded him as priest.^{(AQ) 7} From there they set out for Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah for Jotbathah, a region where there is water in the wadies. ⁸ At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord,^(AR) to stand before the Lord to minister to him, and to bless in his name, as they have done to this day. ⁹ For this reason, Levi has no hereditary portion with his relatives;^(AS) the Lord himself is his portion, as the Lord, your God, promised him.

¹⁰ Meanwhile I stayed on the mountain as I did before, forty days and forty nights, and once again the Lord listened to me. The Lord was unwilling to destroy you. ¹¹ The Lord said to me, Go now and set out at the head of the people,^(AT) that they may enter in and possess the land that I swore to their ancestors I would give them.

The Lord’s Majesty and Compassion. ^12 (AU)Now, therefore, Israel, what does the Lord, your God, ask of you but to fear the Lord, your God, to follow in all his ways, to love and serve the Lord, your God, with your whole heart and with your whole being,^{(AV) 13} to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord that I am commanding you today for your own well-being?^{(AW) 14} Look, the heavens, even the highest heavens, belong to the Lord, your God, as well as the earth and everything on it.^{(AX) 15} Yet only on your ancestors did the Lord set his heart to love them. He chose you, their descendants, from all the peoples, as it is today.^{(AY) 16} Circumcise therefore the foreskins of your hearts,^[e] and be stiff-necked no longer. ¹⁷ For the Lord, your God, is the God of gods, the Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who has no favorites, accepts no bribes,^{(AZ) 18} who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the resident alien, giving them food and clothing.^{(BA) 19} So you too should love the resident alien, for that is what you were in the land of Egypt.^{(BB) 20} The Lord, your God, shall you fear, and him shall you serve; to him hold fast and by his name shall you swear.^{(BC) 21} He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you those great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.^{(BD) 22} Seventy strong your ancestors went down to Egypt,^(BE) and now the Lord, your God, has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.