Deuteronomy 9-11

New King James Version

Israel’s Rebellions Reviewed^(A)

9 “Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, ² a people great and tall, the ^(B)descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?’ ³ Therefore understand today that the Lord your God is He who ^(C)goes over before you as a ^(D)consuming fire. ^(E)He will destroy them and bring them down before you; ^(F)so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has said to you.

^4 (G)“Do not think in your heart, after the Lord your God has cast them out before you, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land’; but it is ^(H)because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out from before you. ^5 (I)It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out from before you, and that He may ^[a]fulfill the ^(J)word which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ⁶ Therefore understand that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a ^(K)stiff-necked^[b] people.

⁷ “Remember! Do not forget how you ^(L)provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. ^(M)From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. ⁸ Also ^(N)in Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, so that the Lord was angry enough with you to have destroyed you. ^9 (O)When I went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and ^(P)forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. ^10 (Q)Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire ^(R)in^[c] the day of the assembly. ¹¹ And it came to pass, 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, ^(S)‘Arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly; they have ^(T)quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made themselves a molded image.’

¹³ “Furthermore ^(U)the Lord spoke to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed ^(V)they are a ^[d]stiff-necked people. ^14 (W)Let Me alone, that I may destroy them and ^(X)blot out their name from under heaven; ^(Y)and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

^15 (Z)“So I turned and came down from the mountain, and ^(AA)the mountain burned with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶ And ^(AB)I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God—had made for yourselves a molded calf! You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you. ¹⁷ Then I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and ^(AC)broke them before your eyes. ¹⁸ And I ^(AD)fell^[e] down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. ^19 (AE)For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was angry with you, to destroy you. ^(AF)But the Lord listened to me at that time also. ²⁰ And the Lord was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him; so I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. ²¹ Then I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it and ground it very small, until it was as fine as dust; and I ^(AG)threw its dust into the brook that descended from the mountain.

²² “Also at ^(AH)Taberah and ^(AI)Massah and ^(AJ)Kibroth Hattaavah you ^[f]provoked the Lord to wrath. ²³ Likewise, ^(AK)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 ^(AL)you did not believe Him nor obey His voice. ^24 (AM)You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.

^25 (AN)“Thus I ^[g]prostrated myself before the Lord; forty days and forty nights I kept prostrating myself, because the Lord had said He would destroy you. ²⁶ Therefore I prayed to the Lord, and said: ‘O Lord God, do not destroy Your people and ^(AO)Your inheritance whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look on the stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin, ²⁸ lest the land from which You brought us should say, “Because the Lord was not able to bring them to the land which 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.’

The Second Pair of Tablets^(AP)

10 “At that time the Lord said to me, ^[h]‘Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain and make yourself an ^(AQ)ark of wood. ² And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and ^(AR)you shall put them in the ark.’

³ “So I made an ark of acacia wood, hewed two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain, having the two tablets in my hand. ⁴ And He wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten ^[i]Commandments, ^(AS)which the Lord had spoken to you in the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me. ⁵ Then I turned and ^(AT)came down from the mountain, and ^(AU)put the tablets in the ark which I had made; ^(AV)and there they are, just as the Lord commanded me.”

⁶ (Now the children of Israel journeyed from the wells of Bene Jaakan to Moserah, where Aaron ^(AW)died, and where he was buried; and Eleazar his son ministered as priest in his ^[j]stead. ^7 (AX)From there they journeyed to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land of ^[k]rivers of water. ⁸ At that time ^(AY)the Lord ^[l]separated the tribe of Levi ^(AZ)to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, ^(BA)to stand before the Lord to minister to Him and ^(BB)to bless in His name, to this day. ^9 (BC)Therefore Levi has no portion nor inheritance with his brethren; the Lord is his inheritance, just as the Lord your God promised him.)

¹⁰ “As at the first time, ^(BD)I stayed in the mountain forty days and forty nights; ^(BE)the Lord also heard me at that time, and the Lord chose not to destroy you. ^11 (BF)Then the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, begin your journey before the people, that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.’

The Essence of the Law

¹² “And now, Israel, ^(BG)what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to ^(BH)love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹³ and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today ^(BI)for your ^[m]good? ¹⁴ Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the ^(BJ)Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it. ¹⁵ The Lord delighted only in your fathers, to love them; and He chose their ^[n]descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day. ¹⁶ Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your ^(BK)heart, and be ^(BL)stiff-necked^[o] no longer. ¹⁷ For the Lord your God is ^(BM)God of gods and ^(BN)Lord of lords, the great God, ^(BO)mighty and awesome, who ^(BP)shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. ^18 (BQ)He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. ¹⁹ Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. ^20 (BR)You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in His name. ²¹ He is your praise, and He is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things which your eyes have seen. ²² Your fathers went down to Egypt with seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as the stars of heaven in multitude.

Love and Obedience Rewarded

11 “Therefore you shall love the Lord your God, and keep His charge, His statutes, His judgments, and His commandments always. ² Know today that I do not speak with your children, who have not known and who have not seen the ^[p]chastening of the Lord your God, His greatness and His mighty hand and His outstretched arm— ³ His signs and His acts which He did in the midst of Egypt, to Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to all his land; ⁴ what He did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and their chariots: ^(BS)how He made the waters of the Red Sea overflow them as they pursued you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day; ⁵ what He did for you in the wilderness until you came to this place; ⁶ and ^(BT)what He did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, their households, their tents, and all the substance that was ^[q]in their possession, in the midst of all Israel— ⁷ but your eyes have ^(BU)seen every great ^[r]act of the Lord which He did.

⁸ “Therefore you shall keep every commandment which I command you today, that you may ^(BV)be strong, and go in and possess the land which you cross over to possess, ⁹ and ^(BW)that you may prolong your days in the land ^(BX)which the Lord ^[s]swore to give your fathers, to them and their descendants, ^(BY)‘a land flowing with milk and honey.’ ¹⁰ For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; ^11 (BZ)but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, ¹² a land for which the Lord your God cares; ^(CA)the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.

¹³ ‘And it shall be that if you earnestly ^[t]obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹⁴ then ^(CB)I^[u] will give you the rain for your land in its season, ^(CC)the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. ^15 (CD)And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may ^(CE)eat and be ^[v]filled.’ ¹⁶ Take heed to yourselves, ^(CF)lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and ^(CG)serve other gods and worship them, ¹⁷ lest ^(CH)the Lord’s anger be aroused against you, and He ^(CI)shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and ^(CJ)you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.

¹⁸ “Therefore ^(CK)you shall ^[w]lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your ^(CL)soul, and ^(CM)bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ^19 (CN)You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. ^20 (CO)And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, ²¹ that ^(CP)your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like ^(CQ)the days of the heavens above the earth.

²² “For if ^(CR)you carefully keep all these commandments which I command you to do—to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and ^(CS)to hold fast to Him— ²³ then the Lord will ^(CT)drive out all these nations from before you, and you will ^(CU)dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves. ^24 (CV)Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours: ^(CW)from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, even to the ^[x]Western Sea, shall be your territory. ²⁵ No man shall be able to ^(CX)stand ^[y]against you; the Lord your God will put the ^(CY)dread of you and the fear of you upon all the land where you tread, just as He has said to you.

^26 (CZ)“Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: ^27 (DA)the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today; ²⁸ and the ^(DB)curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known. ²⁹ Now it shall be, when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you go to possess, that you shall put the ^(DC)blessing on Mount Gerizim and the ^(DD)curse on Mount Ebal. ³⁰ Are they not on the other side of the Jordan, toward the setting sun, in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the plain opposite Gilgal, ^(DE)beside the terebinth trees of Moreh? ³¹ For you will cross over the Jordan and go in to possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and you will possess it and dwell in it. ³² And you shall be careful to observe all the statutes and judgments which I set before you today.