1Listen, Israel. Today you are going to cross the Jordan. You are going in to take the land of nations greater and stronger than you, with great cities walled up to the sky.
2They are a great and tall people, the children of the Anakims. You know about them, and you have heard it said, "Who can stand before the children of Anak!"
3So understand today that the LORD your God is the one who goes over ahead of you. Like a fire that burns everything up, he will destroy them. He will bring them down before you. So you will drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you.
4After the LORD your God has thrown them out before you, do not say in your heart, "The LORD has brought me in to take this land because of my righteousness." No, it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you.
5It is not for your righteousness, or because your heart is upright, that you are going in to take their land. It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, and so that he may keep the word the LORD swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6Understand then that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people.
7Remember, and do not forget, how you made the LORD your God angry in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have rebelled against the LORD.
8At Horeb too you made the LORD angry, so angry with you that he would have destroyed you.
9I had gone up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the LORD made with you. I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water.
10The LORD gave me two tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. On them was written all the words the LORD spoke with you on the mountain out of the middle of the fire, on the day of the assembly.
11At the end of forty days and forty nights, the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.
12The LORD said to me, "Get up and go down quickly from here. Your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have made themselves corrupt. They have turned aside quickly from the way I commanded them. They have made themselves an image of cast metal."
13The LORD also said to me, "I have seen this people, and look, they are a stiff-necked people."
14"Leave me alone, so that I may destroy them and wipe out their name from under heaven. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they are."
15So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire. The two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.
16I looked, and there it was: you had sinned against the LORD your God. You had made yourselves a calf of cast metal. You had turned aside quickly from the way the LORD had commanded you.
17So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands, and broke them before your eyes.
18Then I fell down before the LORD, as I had the first time, for forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sins you had sinned, doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, making him angry.
19For I was afraid of the anger and the burning displeasure the LORD had against you, enough to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me that time also.
20The LORD was very angry with Aaron too, angry enough to destroy him. So at the same time I prayed for Aaron.
21And I took your sin, the calf you had made, and burned it with fire. I crushed it and ground it very small, until it was as fine as dust. Then I threw its dust into the stream that came down from the mountain.
22At Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibrothhattaavah, you made the LORD angry.
23It was the same when the LORD sent you from Kadeshbarnea and said, "Go up and take the land which I have given you." Then you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You did not believe him, and you did not listen to his voice.
24You have rebelled against the LORD from the day I knew you.
25So I fell down before the LORD for forty days and forty nights, as I had fallen down the first time, because the LORD had said he would destroy you.
26I prayed to the LORD and said, "Lord GOD, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance, whom you have redeemed by your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand."
27Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of this people, or at their wickedness, or at their sin.
28If you do, the land you brought us out of will say, 'The LORD was not able to bring them into the land he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.'
29"Yet they are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out by your mighty power and by your outstretched arm."