Warnings

7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to possess, and has cleared away many nations before you, the Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than you, ² and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall not make a covenant (treaty) with them nor show mercy and compassion to them. ³ You shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son; ⁴ for they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled and burn against you and He will quickly destroy you. ⁵ But this is how you shall deal with them: you shall tear down their altars and smash to pieces their sacred pillars, and cut down their Asherim (symbols of the goddess Asherah), and burn their carved or sculpted images in the fire. ⁶ For you are a holy people [set apart] to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people for His own possession [that is, His very special treasure].

⁷ “The Lord did not love you and choose you because you were greater in number than any of the other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ But because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed (bought) you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. ⁹ Therefore know [without any doubt] and understand that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who is keeping His covenant and His [steadfast] lovingkindness to a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; ¹⁰ but repays those who hate Him to their faces, by destroying them; He will not hesitate with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face. ¹¹ Therefore, you shall keep (follow, obey) the commandment and the statutes and judgments (precepts) which I am commanding you today.

Promises of God

¹² “Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the [steadfast] lovingkindness which He swore to your fathers. ¹³ He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your [olive] oil, the offspring of your cattle and the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your fathers to give you. ¹⁴ You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no male or female barren (childless, infertile) among you or among your cattle. ¹⁵ The Lord will take away from you all sickness; and He will not subject you to any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will impose them on all [those] who hate you. ¹⁶ And you shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will give over to you; your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a [deadly] trap to you.

¹⁷ “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I am; how can I dispossess them?’ ¹⁸ you shall not be afraid of them; you shall remember [with confidence] what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt— ¹⁹ the great trials which you saw with your own eyes, and the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. So shall the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ²⁰ Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet (His terror) against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish. ²¹ You shall not dread them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. ²² The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for [if you did] the ^[a]wild animals would become too numerous for you. ²³ But the Lord your God will hand them over to you, and will confuse them with a great panic until they are destroyed. ²⁴ And He will hand over their kings to you, and you will make their name perish from under heaven; no man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ You shall burn the carved and sculpted images of their gods in the fire. You shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, so that you will not be ensnared by it [in a deadly trap], for it is an abomination (repulsive) to the Lord your God. ²⁶ You shall not bring an abomination (idol) into your house, and like it come under the ban (doomed to destruction); you shall utterly detest and you shall utterly hate it, for it is something banned.

God’s Gracious Dealings

8 “Every commandment that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, so that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore [to give] to your fathers. ² And you shall remember [always] all the ways which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart (mind), whether you would keep His commandments or not. ³ He humbled you and allowed you to be hungry and fed you with manna, [a substance] which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, so that He might make you understand [by personal experience] that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your feet swell these forty years. ⁵ Therefore, know in your heart (be fully cognizant) that the Lord your God disciplines and instructs you just as a man disciplines and instructs his son. ⁶ Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk [that is, to live each and every day] in His ways and fear [and worship] Him [with awe-filled reverence and profound respect].^{(A) 7} For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat bread without shortage, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. ¹⁰ When you have eaten and are satisfied, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.

¹¹ “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by failing to keep His commandments and His judgments (precepts) and His statutes which I am commanding you today; ¹² otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, ¹³ and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have increases, ¹⁴ then your heart will become lifted up [by self-conceit and arrogance] and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ¹⁵ He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; it was He who brought water for you out of the flinty rock. ¹⁶ He fed you manna in the wilderness, [a substance] which your fathers did not know, so that He might humble you [by dependence on Him] and that He might test you, to do good [things] for you at the end. ¹⁷ Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ But you shall remember [with profound respect] the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore (solemnly promised) to your fathers, as it is this day. ¹⁹ And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will most certainly perish. ²⁰ Like the nations which the Lord causes to perish before you, so shall you perish; because you would not listen to and obey the voice of the Lord your God.

Israel Provoked God

9 “Hear, O Israel! You are crossing the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and more powerful than you, great cities fortified to heaven, ² a people great and tall, sons of Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’ ³ So know today [with confident assurance] that the Lord your God is crossing [the Jordan] before you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you, and you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord has promised you.

⁴ “Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord is dispossessing them before you. ⁵ It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out before you, and to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

⁶ “Know [without any doubt], that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked (stubborn, obstinate) people. ⁷ Remember [with remorse] and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness; from the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived in this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. ⁸ And at Horeb (Sinai) you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you. ⁹ When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I did not eat food or drink water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God; and on them were written all the words which the Lord had spoken to you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. ¹¹ It came about at the end of forty days and forty nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. ¹² Then the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought from Egypt have acted corruptly. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made (cast) a molten image for themselves.’ ¹³ Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed, they are stiff-necked (stubborn, obstinate) people. ¹⁴ Let 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.’

¹⁵ “So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶ And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten ^[b]calf (idol). You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you.^{(B) 17} So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my two hands and smashed them before your very eyes! ¹⁸ Then, as before, I fell down before the Lord for [another] forty days and forty nights; I did not eat food or drink water, because of all the sin you had committed by doing ^[c]what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke Him to anger. ¹⁹ For I was afraid of the anger and ^[d]absolute fury which the Lord held against you, [enough divine fury] to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me that time also. ²⁰ The Lord was very angry with Aaron, angry [enough] to destroy him, so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. ²¹ I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, and burned it in the fire and thoroughly crushed it, grinding the metal thoroughly until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.

²² “At Taberah also and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you provoked the Lord to wrath. ²³ And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go up and take possession of the land which I have given you,’ then you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, and you did not believe and rely on Him, nor did you obey His voice. ²⁴ You have been rebellious against the Lord from the [first] day that I knew you.

²⁵ “So I fell down and lay face down before the Lord forty days and nights because the Lord had said He would destroy you. ²⁶ Then I prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord God, do not destroy Your people, even Your inheritance, whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought from Egypt with a mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember [with compassion] Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or at their sin, ²⁸ so that the [people of the] land from which You brought us will not say, “Because the Lord was not capable of bringing them into the land which He had promised them and because He hated them He has brought them out to the wilderness [in order] to kill them.” ²⁹ Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You have brought out by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm.’