1 Listen, people of Israel! Today you are about to cross the Jordan River and occupy the land belonging to nations greater and more powerful than you. Their cities are large, with walls that reach the sky.
2 The people themselves are tall and strong; they are giants, and you have heard it said that no one can stand against them.
3 But now you will see for yourselves that the Lord your God will go ahead of you like a raging fire. He will defeat them as you advance, so that you will drive them out and destroy them quickly, as he promised.
4 After the Lord your God has driven them out for you, do not say to yourselves that he brought you in to possess this land because you deserved it. No, the Lord is going to drive these people out for you because they are wicked.
5 It is not because you are good and do what is right that the Lord is letting you take their land. He will drive them out because they are wicked and because he intends to keep the promise that he made to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 You can be sure that the Lord is not giving you this fertile land because you deserve it. No, you are a stubborn people.
7 Never forget how you made the Lord your God angry in the desert. From the day that you left Egypt until the day you arrived here, you have rebelled against him.
8 Also in Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was angry with you to destroy you.
9 I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets on which was written the covenant that the LORD had made with you. I stayed there forty days and nights and did not eat or drink anything.
10 The Lord delivered to me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written according to all the words, which the Lord spoke with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.
11 Yes, after those forty days and nights the Lord gave me the two stone tablets on which he had written the covenant.
12 Then the LORD said to me, Go down the mountain at once, because your people, whom you led out of Egypt, have become corrupt and have done evil. They have already turned away from what I commanded them to do, and they have made an idol for themselves.
13 Furthermore the Lord spoke to me, saying, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people:
14 let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under the sky; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.
15 So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire: and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.
16 I looked, and, behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made yourselves a molten calf: you had turned aside quickly out of the way which the Lord had commanded you.
17 I took hold of the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and broke them before your eyes.
18 I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I did neither eat bread nor drink water; because of all your sin which you sinned, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.
19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure, with which the Lord was angry against you to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also.
20 The Lord was very angry with Aaron to destroy him: and I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.
21 I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burnt it with fire. Then I broke it in pieces, ground it to dust, and threw the dust into the stream that flowed down the mountain.
22 At Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah, you provoked the Lord to wrath.
23 When the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you; then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and you didn't believe him, nor listen to his voice.
24 You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.
25 So I fell down before the Lord the forty days and forty nights that I fell down, because the Lord had said he would destroy you.
26 I prayed to the Lord, and said, Lord God, do not destroy your people and your inheritance, that you have redeemed through your greatness, that you have brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
27 Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look to the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin.
28 Otherwise, the Egyptians will say that you were unable to take your people into the land that you had promised them. They will say that you took your people out into the desert to kill them, because you hated them.
29 Yet they are your people and your inheritance, which you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.