Old/New Testament
7 Moses: As the Eternal, your True God, is bringing you into the land where you’re going to live when you cross the Jordan, He’ll drive out many nations ahead of you—Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—seven nations that are bigger and stronger than you are. 2 The Eternal your God will put them in your power. You must crush them; destroy them completely! Don’t make any treaties with them, and don’t show them any mercy. 3 Above all, don’t intermarry with them! Don’t marry your daughters to any of their sons, and don’t marry your sons to any of their daughters.
Eternal One: 4 This would cause your enemies to turn your children away from Me to worship other gods.
Moses: If you did worship other gods, the Eternal would become furious with you and destroy you in an instant! 5 So this is what you must do to these nations instead: tear down their altars, smash their monoliths, chop down their sacred poles,[a] and throw the idols they’ve carved into the fire!
One of the most important ways faith is communicated is from parent to child. Most people who do find a lifelong faith come into it by the time they are young adults, and the most significant influence on them is what they’ve seen modeled at home. Stories and experiences are a compelling influence on the faith of children.
The first stage in building this sense of covenant loyalty to God was to eliminate every trace of pagan worship from the land. None of the Canaanites’ existing religious fixtures could be used for worship. The altars other nations used to offer their sacrifices were dedicated explicitly to other gods, like Baal and Asherah, through their distinctive designs and decorations. The True God could not be represented in the shape of any created thing since He is the creator of everything!
Moses: 6 Remember: you’re a people set apart for the Eternal your God; He is your God and has chosen you to be His own possession—His special people—out of all the peoples on the earth. 7 The Eternal didn’t become devoted to you and choose you because you were the most numerous of all the peoples—in fact, you were the least! 8 Instead, He brought you out of Egypt with overwhelming power and liberated you from slavery to Pharaoh the king because He loved you and was keeping the oath He swore to your ancestors. 9 I want you to know that the Eternal your God is the only true God. He’s the faithful God who keeps His covenants and shows loyal love for a thousand generations to those who in return love Him and keep His commands. 10 But He holds personally accountable those who hate Him, and He destroys them; He does not delay when anyone hates Him, but He holds them personally accountable. 11 Therefore, be very careful to obey the commands and rules and judgments I’m giving you today.
12 If you pay attention to these judgments and keep them carefully, the Eternal your God will keep the covenant He made with your ancestors and show you His loyal love. 13 He’ll love you and bless you and increase your population. He’ll bless your children, and He’ll bless your agriculture. The land He promised your ancestors He’d give you will produce abundantly; and you’ll have grain and wine and olive oil, many cattle, and new flocks. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people. None of your men or women will be unable to have children; all of your cattle will have offspring. 15 The Eternal will keep every illness away from you. He won’t afflict you with any of those horrible diseases you saw in Egypt—He’ll put them instead on those who hate you! 16 You are to destroy all the nations the Eternal, your True God, puts in your power. Don’t show them any pity! You must not worship their gods—that behavior is a deadly trap!
17 You might say to yourselves, “Those nations are so much more powerful than we are! How can we ever displace them in the land?” 18 But don’t be afraid of them! Remember what the Eternal, your True God, did to Pharaoh and to all of Egypt. 19 You saw with your own eyes how the Eternal your God brought you out of there by testing the Egyptians with great plagues, warning them with signs and omens, and fighting against them with overwhelming power. He is your God and will do the same thing to all the nations you’re so afraid of right now. 20 The Eternal your God will even send swarms of hornets against them. Those hornets will finish off anyone who escapes from you and tries to hide from the death you bring. 21 So don’t be so terrified of these other nations—the Eternal your God is with you. He’s a great and awesome God! 22 But He will drive out these nations ahead of you only little by little. You won’t be able to finish them off all at once because if you did, the wild animals would reproduce rapidly in the empty land and that would be dangerous. 23 But the Eternal your God definitely will defeat these nations in front of you. He will throw them into a great panic until they are all destroyed. 24 He’ll put their kings in your power, so you will be able to wipe out all their names. No one under heaven will ever know they existed! Not a single person will be able to resist you; you’ll destroy them all. 25 Then you must burn up all of their carved idols in the fire. Don’t admire them because the silver and gold in them are so valuable. If you take those metals, you’ll fall into a deadly trap because He abhors these idols! 26 You must not bring these horrible things into your house. If you do, you’ll be doomed to destruction, just as they are. You should be totally horrified and disgusted by these idols—they are doomed to destruction!
8 Moses: You must obey very carefully all of the law, which I’m commanding you today. If you do, you’ll live and thrive, and you’ll go in and take possession of the land He promised to your ancestors. 2 Remember how the Eternal, your True God, led you through the wilderness these past 40 years. He did this to humble you, to test you, to uncover your motivations, to see if you would obey His commands. 3 He humbled you by making you hungry when there was no food in the desert. Then He fed you with manna, a food you and your ancestors had never heard of. He did this because He wanted you to understand that what makes you truly alive is not the bread you eat but following every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One.[b] 4 Your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t swell throughout your 40 years of wandering. 5 I want you to know in your hearts that the Eternal your God has been training you just as a parent trains a child. 6 So obey His commands! Live as He has instructed, and fear Him. 7 The Eternal your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with torrents of rushing water, with springs and underground streams flowing out into the valleys and hills. 8 It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of oil-rich olive trees and date honey. 9 In that land, you’ll always have plenty to eat—you won’t lack anything! There’s iron in the rocks, and you can dig copper from the hills. 10 You’ll eat and be satisfied, and then you’ll humbly thank the Eternal your God for the good land He’s given you.
11 But then be very careful! Don’t forget the Eternal your God and disobey the commands and decrees and rules I’m giving you today. 12 When your stomachs are full, when you’ve built comfortable houses to live in, 13 when you have large herds and flocks, when you possess plenty of silver and gold, and when you have more things than you imagined possible; 14 then don’t become proud and puffed up and forget Him. He brought you out of the land of Egypt where you were slaves; 15 and He led you through that awful, vast wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, through that desert where there was no water. He made water come out of a hard rock; 16 and He fed you in the wilderness with manna, a food your ancestors had never heard of. He did all this to humble you and test you, but it was all intended for your good in the end. 17 If He hadn’t, you might have believed, “I’ve gotten all this wealth by my own power and strength!” 18 Remember the Eternal One your God. He’s the One who gives you the power to get wealth, so He can keep the covenant promises He made to your ancestors, as He is doing now. 19 I testify against you today that if you do forget Him and pursue other gods, if you worship them and bow down to them; then you will certainly be destroyed. 20 Just like the nations the Eternal is now destroying ahead of you, you’ll be destroyed yourselves because you wouldn’t listen to His voice.
Throughout the Bible, God challenges His people to make sure the poor and needy are well cared for. Grinding poverty and deprivation destroy the wholeness of life that God intends for all people. However, as Moses warns here, achieving prosperity can lead people to be complacent and self-sufficient and to forget that God has been the One who has provided for them.
Perhaps no warning is more urgently needed for God’s people in our own wealthy and comfortable society. Prosperity can tempt us to forget about God and to act as if we can take care of everything through our own means. But with prosperity often comes poverty. These humbling, testing experiences are meant to build the qualities of gratitude and trust into our lives, and they keep us from forgetting God even when we do enjoy prosperity.
9 Moses: Listen to me, Israel! Today you’re going to cross the Jordan and enter the land you’ll take away from nations that are bigger and stronger than you. They live in huge cities that have defense walls as high as the sky. 2 They’re big and tall, giants descended from the Anakim. You know all about them from the 12 spies I sent into the land—you’ve heard the saying, “Who can ever fight with the descendants of Anak?” 3 So I want you to know today that it will be the Eternal your God who will go across the Jordan ahead of you. A blazing fire, He’ll destroy those nations. He’ll subdue them so you can destroy them quickly and take their place, as He has promised you will. 4 When the Eternal your God has driven them out ahead of you, then don’t begin to believe He gave you this land because you’re so good and righteous! It’s just the opposite; He is giving you their land because those other nations are so bad! 5 It’s not because you’ve conducted yourselves so well or because you have such pure hearts that you’re going to take the land; the Eternal your God is driving out those other nations ahead of you because they’re so wicked. He’s keeping His word, the promise He made to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 6 I’ll say it again: the Eternal One your God isn’t giving you this good land because you’re so good. You’re stubborn, obstinate people. 7 Remember—don’t forget—how you kept infuriating Him in the wilderness. From the day you came out of Egypt until the day you arrived here, you’ve been rebelling against Him.
8 Even at Horeb, you infuriated Him. The Eternal got so angry with you He was ready to destroy you! 9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets—the tablets of the covenant He made with you—I stayed on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. I didn’t eat or drink anything all that time, preparing myself to receive these holy words. 10-11 At the end of those 40 days and nights, the Eternal gave me those two stone tablets of the covenant. On them He’d engraved with His own finger everything He told you on the day you gathered at the mountain, when He spoke to you from inside the fire. 12 The Eternal told me, “Get up, and go back down the mountain as fast as you can! While you’ve been up here surrounded by My holiness, the people you led out of Egypt have become corrupt! How quickly they’ve left the path I commanded them to stay on. They’ve melted gold and poured it into a mold and made themselves an idol! 13 I’ve seen how stubborn and obstinate these people are. 14 Don’t try to stop Me—I’m going to destroy them! I’ll wipe out every last trace of them under the sky, and I’ll make a bigger and stronger nation out of just you.”
15 The mountain was still blazing with fire as I hurried back down it, carrying the two covenant tablets in my hands. 16 I saw with my own eyes how you had sinned against the Eternal, your True God: you’d cast an idol in the shape of a young bull!
This young bull is made in imitation of the Canaanite fertility gods. The bull is a prominent symbol of Baal. Creating this idol requires a long, intentional process of collecting enough precious metal for a statue, melting it down and purifying it, pouring it into a mold that also has to be designed and crafted, and making sure the statue cools evenly so that it doesn’t break apart. (Perhaps the Israelites learned these crafts by observation or practice in Egypt.) This was no casual slip into an unintentional religious compromise. This is a deliberate embrace of a god other than the Lord, right at the moment when He is drawing up His covenant of love with Israel. They are as unfaithful to the Lord as a person who has an affair while on his honeymoon!
Moses: How quickly you left the path the Eternal commanded you to stay on. 17 Right before your eyes I took the two tablets, hurled them onto the ground, and smashed them to pieces. 18 I went back up the mountain, and for another 40 days and nights I prostrated myself before Him, lying face down on the ground in grief and petition, not eating or drinking anything as before. You had sinned so seriously—you did what the Eternal had just told you was wrong, and this made Him furious! 19 I was afraid[c] He was so violently angry with you that He’d destroy you, as He said He would. But one more time, the Eternal One listened to me, and He spared you. 20 I had to pray particularly for Aaron because the Eternal was furious with him for making the idol—He would have killed my brother! 21 I took the calf idol you made, that embodiment of your sin, and I burned it up. Then I crushed what was left, ground it into tiny pieces until it was as fine as dust, and threw the dust into the riverbed that rushes down the mountain.
22 You and your parents were always making the Eternal furious! At Taberah, you whined and complained;[d] at Massah, you were sure the Lord was going to let you die of thirst;[e] at Kibroth-hattaavah, you said you were sick of the food He provided![f] 23 At Kadesh-barnea, when you finally reached the promised land,[g] the Eternal sent you in: “Go and take possession of the land—I’ve given it to you!” But you defied this direct order from the Eternal, your True God! You didn’t trust Him, and you didn’t listen to His voice. 24 You’ve been rebelling against Him from the day I met you!
25 That’s why, at Horeb, I lay face down before the Eternal for 40 days and nights, praying for you: He said He was going to destroy you, and I knew He had every reason to! 26 I prayed to Him, “Eternal Lord, please don’t destroy Your people! They’re Your own possession: You liberated them from another master—You brought them out of Egypt with overwhelming power. 27 Remember Your loyal servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; please forget about how stubborn and wicked and sinful these people are. Don’t let their actions spoil Your greater plan. 28 Otherwise, the people back in the land You brought us out of will be saying, “The Eternal couldn’t really bring them into that land He promised them. He actually hated those people, and He brought them out into the desert in order to kill them off.” 29 Remember they are Your people, Your own possession, the ones You brought out of Egypt Yourself with such overwhelming power!
19 When evening came, [Jesus and His followers][a] left the city again. 20 The next morning on the way back to Jerusalem, they passed a tree that had withered down to its very roots.
Peter (remembering): 21 That’s the fig tree, Teacher, the one You cursed just yesterday morning. It’s withered away to nothing!
Jesus: 22 Trust in God. 23 If you do, honestly, you can say to this mountain, “Mountain, uproot yourself and throw yourself into the sea.” If you don’t doubt, but trust that what you say will take place, then it will happen. 24 So listen to what I’m saying: Whatever you pray for or ask from God, believe that you’ll receive it and you will. 25 When you pray, if you remember anyone who has wronged you, forgive him so that God above can also forgive you. [26 If you don’t forgive others, don’t expect God’s forgiveness.][b]
27 As they arrived in Jerusalem and were walking in the temple, the chief priests, scribes, and elders came to Jesus 28 and asked Him a question.
Leaders: Tell us, who has given You the authority to say and do the things You’re saying and doing?
Jesus: 29 I will answer your question, if you will answer one for Me. Only then will I tell you who gives Me authority to do these things. 30 Tell Me, when John was ritually cleansing through baptism for the forgiveness of sins, was his authority from heaven or was it merely human?
31 The priests, scribes, and elders huddled together to think through an answer.
Leaders (to themselves): If we say, “It must have been from heaven,” then Jesus will have us. He’ll ask, “Then why didn’t you listen to him and follow him?” 32 But if we say, “John’s cleansing was only human,” the people will be up in arms because they think John was a prophet sent by God. 33 (responding to Jesus) We don’t know what to tell You.
Jesus: All right, then don’t expect Me to tell you where I get the authority to say and do these things.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.