Deuteronomy 9–11

The Lord Will Be with Israel

9Listen, Israel. You will soon cross the Jordan River to go in and force out nations that are bigger and stronger than you. They have large cities with walls up to the sky. ²The people there are Anakites, who are strong and tall. You know about them, and you have heard it said: “No one can stop the Anakites.” ³But today remember that the Lord your God goes in before you to destroy them like a fire that burns things up. He will defeat them ahead of you, and you will force them out and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord has said.

⁴After the Lord your God has forced those nations out ahead of you, don’t say to yourself, “The Lord brought me here to take this land because I am so good.” No! It is because these nations are evil that the Lord will force them out ahead of you. ⁵You are going in to take the land, not because you are good and honest, but because these nations are evil. That is why the Lord your God will force them out ahead of you, to keep his promise to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ⁶The Lord your God is giving you this good land to take as your own. But know this: It is not because you are good; you are a stubborn people.

Remember the Lord’s Anger

⁷Remember this and do not forget it: You made the Lord your God angry in the desert. You would not obey the Lord from the day you left Egypt until you arrived here. ⁸At Mount Sinai you made the Lord angry—angry enough to destroy you. ⁹When I went up on the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets with the Agreement the Lord had made with you, I stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights; I did not eat bread or drink water. ¹⁰The Lord gave me two stone tablets, which God had written on with his own finger. On them were all the commands that the Lord gave to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day you were gathered there.

¹¹When the forty days and forty nights were over, the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets with the Agreement on them. ¹²Then the Lord told me, “Get up and go down quickly from here, because the people you brought out from Egypt are ruining themselves. They have quickly turned away from what I commanded and have made an idol for themselves.”

¹³The Lord said to me, “I have watched these people, and they are very stubborn! ¹⁴Get away so that I may destroy them and make the whole world forget who they are. Then I will make another nation from you that will be bigger and stronger than they are.”

¹⁵So I turned and came down the mountain that was burning with fire, and the two stone tablets with the Agreement were in my hands. ¹⁶When I looked, I saw you had sinned against the Lord your God and had made an idol in the shape of a calf. You had quickly turned away from what the Lord had told you to do. ¹⁷So I took the two stone tablets and threw them down, breaking them into pieces right in front of you.

¹⁸Then I again bowed facedown on the ground before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I did not eat bread or drink water. You had sinned by doing what the Lord said was evil, and you made him angry. ¹⁹I was afraid of the Lord’s anger and rage, because he was angry enough with you to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me again. ²⁰And the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but then I prayed for Aaron, too. ²¹I took that sinful calf idol you had made and burned it in the fire. I crushed it into a powder like dust and threw the dust into a stream that flowed down the mountain.

²²You also made the Lord angry at Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth Hattaavah.

²³Then the Lord sent you away from Kadesh Barnea and said, “Go up and take the land I have given you.” But you rejected the command of the Lord your God. You did not trust him or obey him. ²⁴You have refused to obey the Lord as long as I have known you.

²⁵The Lord had said he would destroy you, so I threw myself down in front of him for those forty days and forty nights. ²⁶I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord God, do not destroy your people, your own people, whom you freed and brought out of Egypt by your great power and strength. ²⁷Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Don’t look at how stubborn these people are, and don’t look at their sin and evil. ²⁸Otherwise, Egypt will say, ‘It was because the Lord was not able to take his people into the land he promised them, and it was because he hated them that he took them into the desert to kill them.’ ²⁹But they are your people, Lord, your own people, whom you brought out of Egypt with your great power and strength.”

New Stone Tablets

10At that time the Lord said to me, “Cut two stone tablets like the first ones and come up to me on the mountain. Also make a wooden Ark. ²I will write on the tablets the same words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, and you will put the new tablets in the Ark.”

³So I made the Ark out of acacia wood, and I cut out two stone tablets like the first ones. Then I went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. ⁴The Lord wrote the same things on these tablets he had written before—the Ten Commandments that he had told you on the mountain from the fire, on the day you were gathered there. And the Lord gave them to me. ⁵Then I turned and came down the mountain; I put the tablets in the Ark I had made, as the Lord had commanded, and they are still there.

⁶(The people of Israel went from the wells of the Jaakanites to Moserah. Aaron died there and was buried; his son Eleazar became priest in his place. ⁷From Moserah they went to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah they went to Jotbathah, a place with streams of water. ⁸At that time the Lord chose the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Agreement with the Lord. They were to serve the Lord and to bless the people in his name, which they still do today. ⁹That is why the Levites did not receive any land of their own; instead, they received the Lord himself as their gift, as the Lord your God told them.)

¹⁰I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights just like the first time, and the Lord listened to me this time also. He did not want to destroy you. ¹¹The Lord said to me, “Go and lead the people so that they will go in and take the land I promised their ancestors.”

What the Lord Wants You to Do

¹²Now, Israel, this is what the Lord your God wants you to do: Respect the Lord your God, and do what he has told you to do. Love him. Serve the Lord your God with your whole being, ¹³and obey the Lord’s commands and laws that I am giving you today for your own good.

¹⁴The Lord owns the world and everything in it—the heavens, even the highest heavens, are his. ¹⁵But the Lord cared for and loved your ancestors, and he chose you, their descendants, over all the other nations, just as it is today. ¹⁶Give yourselves completely to serving him, and do not be stubborn any longer. ¹⁷The Lord your God is God of all gods and Lord of all lords. He is the great God, who is strong and wonderful. He does not take sides, and he will not be talked into doing evil. ¹⁸He helps orphans and widows, and he loves foreigners and gives them food and clothes. ¹⁹You also must love foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt. ²⁰Respect the Lord your God and serve him. Be loyal to him and make your promises in his name. ²¹He is the one you should praise; he is your God, who has done great and wonderful things for you, which you have seen with your own eyes. ²²There were only seventy of your ancestors when they went down to Egypt, and now the Lord your God has made you as many as the stars in the sky.

Great Things Israel Saw

11Love the Lord your God and always obey his orders, rules, laws, and commands. ²Remember today it was not your children who saw and felt the correction of the Lord your God. They did not see his majesty, his power, his strength, ³or his signs and the things he did in Egypt to the king and his whole country. ⁴They did not see what he did to the Egyptian army, its horses and chariots, when he drowned them in the Red Sea as they were chasing you. The Lord ruined them forever. ⁵They did not see what he did for you in the desert until you arrived here. ⁶They did not see what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the ground opened up and swallowed them, their families, their tents, and everyone who stood with them in Israel. ⁷It was you who saw all these great things the Lord has done.

⁸So obey all the commands I am giving you today so that you will be strong and can go in and take the land you are going to take as your own. ⁹Then you will live a long time in the land that the Lord promised to give to your ancestors and their descendants, a fertile land. ¹⁰The land you are going to take is not like Egypt, where you were. There you had to plant your seed and water it, like a vegetable garden, by using your feet. ¹¹But the land that you will soon cross the Jordan River to take is a land of hills and valleys, a land that drinks rain from heaven. ¹²It is a land the Lord your God cares for. His eyes are on it continually, and he watches it from the beginning of the year to the end.

¹³If you carefully obey the commands I am giving you today and love the Lord your God and serve him with your whole being, ¹⁴then he will send rain on your land at the right time, in the fall and spring, and you will be able to gather your grain, new wine, and oil. ¹⁵He will put grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will have plenty to eat.

¹⁶Be careful, or you will be fooled and will turn away to serve and worship other gods. ¹⁷If you do, the Lord will become angry with you and will shut the heavens so it will not rain. Then the land will not grow crops, and you will soon die in the good land the Lord is giving you. ¹⁸Remember my words with your whole being. Write them down and tie them to your hands as a sign; tie them on your foreheads to remind you. ¹⁹Teach them well to your children, talking about them…