Deuteronomy 9:1-18 ▼

1 Hear, O Israel! Today you are passing over the Jordan to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified to the heavens,

2 a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and you have heard: “Who can stand before the faces of the sons of Anak?”

3 And you shall know today that YHWH your God is He who is passing over before you as a consuming fire; He will destroy them, and He will bring them down before you. And you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as YHWH has spoken to you.

4 Do not speak in your heart, after YHWH your God has cast them out before you, saying, “Because of my righteousness YHWH has brought me in to possess this land.” For the wickedness of these nations, YHWH is driving them out from before you.

5 Not in your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but for the wickedness of these nations YHWH your God is driving them out from before you, so that He may fulfill the word that YHWH swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

6 And you shall know that not in your righteousness is YHWH your God giving you this good land to possess it; for you are a people stiff of neck.

7 Remember—do not forget—how you provoked YHWH your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you? came to this place, you? have been rebellious against YHWH.

8 And in Horeb you? provoked YHWH to wrath, and YHWH was angry with you? to destroy you?.

9 In my going up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that YHWH made with you?, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. Bread I did not eat and water I did not drink.

10 And YHWH delivered to me two tablets of stone, written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that YHWH had spoken to you? on the mountain out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.

11 And it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights that YHWH gave to me two tablets of stone, tablets of the covenant.

12 And YHWH said to me, “Arise, go down quickly from here; for your people have acted corruptly, whom you brought out of Egypt. They have turned aside quickly from the way that I commanded them! They have made for themselves a molten image.”

13 And YHWH spoke to me, saying, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a people stiff of neck.

14 Desist from Me, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.”

15 And I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain burned with the fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.

16 And I looked, and behold, you? had sinned against YHWH your? God; you? had made for yourselves a molten calf; you? had turned aside quickly from the way that YHWH had commanded you?.

17 And I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands, and I broke them before your? eyes.

18 And I fell down before the face of YHWH, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; bread I did not eat and water I did not drink, because of all your? sin that you? committed in doing the evil in the eyes of YHWH, to provoke Him to anger.