Old/New Testament
7 When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take as a possession, and when he clears away many nations before you (the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and stronger than you), 2 and when the Lord your God has given them over to you and he has struck them down, you are to devote them to destruction. Do not make a treaty with them, and do not show mercy to them. 3 Do not form marriage alliances with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons, and do not take their daughters for your sons, 4 because they will turn your sons away from following me, and they will serve other gods. The anger of the Lord will burn against you, and then he will destroy you quickly. 5 Instead, this is the way you must deal with them: Break down their altars. Smash their sacred memorial stones. Cut down their Asherah poles. [a]Burn their idols with fire.
6 For you are a people that is holy to the Lord your God, because the Lord your God has chosen you to belong to him as a people that is his treasured possession, chosen from all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. 7 The Lord became attached to you by love and has chosen you, not because you were more numerous than all the peoples. Actually you were the fewest of all the peoples. 8 But because of the Lord’s love for you and because he was keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that is why the Lord brought you out by a strong hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 He did this so that you would know that the Lord your God, yes, he is God, the faithful God who maintains both his covenant and his mercy for those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations. 10 But he also repays the ones who hate him to their face by destroying them. He will not delay repaying anyone who hates him. To his face he will fully repay him. 11 So you are to be careful to keep the set of commandments and the statutes and the ordinances that I am commanding you today.
12 When you obey these ordinances and are careful to keep them, the Lord your God will keep for your benefit the covenant and the mercy that he promised to your fathers with an oath. 13 He will love you and bless you and multiply you. He will bless the fruit from your womb and the fruit from your soil, your grain and your new wine and your fresh olive oil, the offspring of your cattle and the young of your flock upon the land that he swore to your fathers that he would give you. 14 You will be blessed beyond all the peoples. There will not be an infertile male or infertile female among you or among your livestock. 15 The Lord will remove from you all sickness, and he will not place on you all of the diseases of Egypt, the calamities that you experienced. Instead he will put them on all those who hate you. 16 You will consume all the peoples that the Lord your God is giving to you. Your eye is not to look with compassion on them. You are not to serve their gods, because that would be a snare to you.
17 If you say in your heart, “These nations are more numerous than we are. How are we able to take possession of their land?” 18 do not be afraid of them. Be sure to remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the Egyptians. 19 The great test which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders and the strong hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out—that is what the Lord your God will do to all the peoples that you fear.
20 The Lord your God will also send the hornet against them until those who are left and are hiding from you have been destroyed. 21 Do not be overwhelmed before them, because the Lord your God is right among you, a great and awe-inspiring God.
22 The Lord your God, the God before you, will clear away the nations little by little. You will not succeed in finishing them off too quickly, so that the wild animals do not become too numerous for you. 23 But the Lord your God will give them over to you, and he will throw these peoples into complete confusion until they are destroyed. 24 He will give their kings into your hands, and he will cause their names to die out under the heavens, because none of them will be able to hold their ground against you until you have destroyed them. 25 Burn the images of their gods with fire, and do not covet the silver and gold on them or take it for yourself, so that you are not snared by it, because it is an abomination to the Lord your God. 26 Do not bring a detestable thing to your house and in that way become devoted to destruction just like it. Detest it and regard it as an utterly disgusting thing, because it is devoted to destruction.
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,[b] 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[c] 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[d] 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.”
19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples would leave the city.
The Withered Fig Tree
20 As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered down to the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”
22 Jesus replied, “Have faith in God. 23 Amen I tell you: Whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, everything that you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 Whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. 26 But if you do not forgive, your Father in heaven will not forgive your sins.”[a]
Jesus’ Authority Is Questioned
27 They went into Jerusalem again. As he was walking in the temple courts, the chief priests, the experts in the law, and the elders came to him. 28 They asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things? Or who gave you this authority to do these things?”
29 Jesus replied, “I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 30 The baptism of John—was it from heaven or from men? Answer me.”
31 They discussed this with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ 32 But if we say, ‘From men’. . . .” (They feared the crowd, because everybody held that John really was a prophet.) 33 So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.