Attention, Israel!
This very day you are crossing the Jordan to enter the land and oust nations that are much bigger and stronger than you are. You’re going to find huge cities with sky-high fortress-walls and gigantic people, descendants of the Anakites—you’ve heard all about them; you’ve heard the saying, “No one can stand up to an Anakite.”
Today know this: GOD, your God, is crossing the river ahead of you—he’s a consuming fire. He will destroy the nations, he will put them under your power. You will oust them and very quickly wipe them out, just as GOD promised you would.
But when GOD pushes them out ahead of you, don’t start thinking to yourselves, “It’s because of all the good I’ve done that GOD has brought me in here to dispossess these nations.” Actually it’s because of all the evil these nations have done. No, it’s nothing good that you’ve done, no record for decency that you’ve built up, that got you here; it’s because of the vile wickedness of these nations that GOD, your God, is dispossessing them before you so that he can keep his promised word to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Know this and don’t ever forget it: It’s not because of any good that you’ve done that GOD is giving you this good land to own. Anything but! You’re stubborn as mules. Keep in mind and don’t ever forget how angry you made GOD, your God, in the wilderness. You’ve kicked and screamed against GOD from the day you left Egypt until you got to this place, rebels all the way. You made GOD angry at Horeb, made him so angry that he wanted to destroy you. When I climbed the mountain to receive the slabs of stone, the tablets of the covenant that GOD made with you, I stayed there on the mountain forty days and nights: I ate no food; I drank no water. Then GOD gave me the two slabs of stone, engraved with the finger of God. They contained word for word everything that GOD spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of the assembly.
It was at the end of the forty days and nights that GOD gave me the two slabs of stone, the tablets of the covenant. GOD said to me, “Get going, and quickly. Get down there, because your people whom you led out of Egypt have ruined everything. In almost no time at all they have left the road that I laid out for them and gone off and made for themselves a cast god.”
GOD said, “I look at this people and all I see are hardheaded, hardhearted rebels. Get out of my way now so I can destroy them. I’m going to wipe them off the face of the map. Then I’ll start over with you to make a nation far better and bigger than they could ever be.”
I turned around and started down the mountain—by now the mountain was blazing with fire—carrying the two tablets of the covenant in my two arms. That’s when I saw it: There you were, sinning against GOD, your God—you had made yourselves a cast god in the shape of a calf! So soon you had left the road that GOD had commanded you to walk on. I held the two stone slabs high and threw them down, smashing them to bits as you watched.
Then I flung myself down before GOD, just as I had at the beginning of the forty days and nights. I ate no food; I drank no water. I did this because of you, all your sins, sinning against GOD, doing what is evil in GOD’s eyes and making him angry. I was terrified of GOD’s furious anger, his blazing anger. I was sure he would destroy you. But once again GOD listened to me. And Aaron! How furious he was with Aaron—ready to destroy him. But I prayed also for Aaron at that same time.
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