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.

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