Deuteronomy 9:1-29
9 “Listen, Israel: you are crossing the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and more numerous than yourselves, great cities fortified up to the sky,
2 a people great and tall, sons of ʽAnakites, of whom you know and of whom you have heard say ‘Who makes a stand before the sons of ʽAnak?’
3 so know today that it is your God Jehovah who is crossing before you, a devouring fire: he will root them out, and he will humble them before you and dispossess them and destroy them quickly, as Jehovah promised you.
4 Do not say to yourself when Jehovah pushes them out of the way before you ‘It is for my saintliness Jehovah has brought me in to take possession of this country,’ when it is for the wickedness of these nations Jehovah is dispossessing them before you.
5 It is not for your saintliness and right-mindedness that you are going in to take possession of their country, but because of the wickedness of these nations your God Jehovah is dispossessing them before you, and in order to make good the word that Jehovah swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob;
6 so know it is not for your saintliness your God Jehovah is giving you this good country to take possession of, because you are a hard-necked people.
7 “Remember, do not forget, how you incensed your God Jehovah in the wilderness; from the day you came out of Egypt till you came to this place you have been disobedient toward Jehovah;
8 and at Horeb you incensed Jehovah and Jehovah was angry at you to the point of rooting you out,
9 when I went up on the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant Jehovah had made with you, and I stayed on the mountain forty days and nights not eating food nor drinking water,
10 and Jehovah gave me the two stone tablets written by the divine finger, and on them all the words Jehovah had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.
11 And at the end of forty days and nights Jehovah gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant;
12 but Jehovah said to me ‘Up with you, go down at once from here, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have turned vicious, they have gone off at once from the course I enjoined on them, they have made themselves a metal statue.’
13 And Jehovah said to me ‘I see this people is a hard-necked people;
14 let me alone and I will root them out and obliterate their name from under the sky, and will make you into a nation greater and more numerous than they.’
15 And I turned round and went down off the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire, with the two tablets of the covenant on my two arms.
16 And I saw that you had sinned against your God Jehovah, had made yourselves a metal calf, had gone off at once from the course Jehovah had enjoined on you;
17 and I grasped the two tablets and threw them off my two arms and broke them in pieces before your eyes.
18 And I flung myself down before Jehovah as I had at first, forty days and nights, not eating food nor drinking water, for all your sins that you had committed in doing what displeased Jehovah, provoking him;
19 for I quailed at the anger and resentment to which Jehovah was incensed against you to root you out; but Jehovah listened to me that time too.
20 And Jehovah was very angry at Aaron, to the point of rooting him out, but I prayed on Aaron’s behalf too that time.
21 And your sin that you had made, the calf, I took and burned in a fire, and pounded it up, grinding it thoroughly till it was fine as dust, and threw the dust of it into the arroyo that ran down from the mountain.
22 “And at Tabeerah and at Massah and at Kibroth-hat-Taavah you kept incensing Jehovah;
23 and when Jehovah sent you from Kadesh-Barneʽa with the order ‘Go up and take possession of the country I have given you’ you disobeyed your God Jehovah, you did not trust him and obey him.
24 You have been disobedient toward Jehovah ever since I knew you.
25 “And I flung myself down before Jehovah for the forty days and nights that I did so because Jehovah talked of rooting you out;
26 but I prayed to Jehovah and said ‘Lord Jehovah, do not make away with your people, your estate, which you have redeemed in your greatness, which you have brought out of Egypt with a strong hand.
27 Remember for your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not turn your eyes toward this people’s obstinacy and wickedness and sin,
28 lest the country you brought us out of should say “It was because of Jehovah’s inability to bring them into the country he had promised them, and because he hated them, that he led them out to bring them to their death in the wilderness,”
29 when they are your own people and your own estate which you have brought out by your great strength and your outstretched arm.’
