1"Listen, Israel! Today you are about to cross the Jordan to enter and dispossess greater and mightier nations than you, who live in large cities that are fortified to the sky.
3But know today that the LORD your God is going ahead of you as a consuming fire. He will destroy and subdue them before you. He will dispossess and destroy them quickly, just as the LORD told you.
4After the LORD has expelled them before you, you are not to say to yourselves, 'The LORD caused me to enter and possess this land because of my righteousness.'
5On the contrary, it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you to confirm what the LORD promised by an oath to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
7"Remember—and don't ever forget—how you provoked the LORD your God in the desert. From the day that you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place you have been rebelling against the LORD.
9Then I went up to the mountain to receive the two stone Tablets of the Covenant that the LORD had established with you. I stayed on the mountain for 40 days and nights without eating food or drinking water.
10Then the LORD gave me the two stone tablets on which God inscribed with his own finger all the words that the LORD spoke to you on the mountain from the middle of the fire that day when you were all assembled together.
12"Then the LORD told me, 'Get going! Go down from here at once! Your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt. They have turned quickly from the way that I commanded them, and have cast an idol for their use.'
14Let me alone! I will destroy them and blot out their name under heaven. Then I'll make you into a nation that will be mighty and more numerous than they are.'
16Then I saw how you had really sinned against the LORD your God! You had made for yourselves a calf, a cast idol. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD your God had commanded.
18I fell down in the LORD's presence, just as I had the first 40 days and nights. I did not eat food or drink water because of your sin. You had sinned by committing this evil in the sight of the LORD, thereby provoking him to anger.
21Now, when you made the calf that made you sin, I grabbed it, burned it with fire, crushed it, and ground it thoroughly until it was pulverized to powder. Then I threw the powder into the river that was flowing from the mountain."
23When the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea and told you, 'Go possess the land that I gave you,' instead you disobeyed what the LORD your God said. You didn't trust him or listen to his voice.
26So I prayed to the LORD and said, 'Oh LORD my God, don't destroy your people and your inheritance whom you redeemed by your power. You brought them out from Egypt in a powerful way.
28Otherwise, the people of the land from which you brought us will say, "The LORD wasn't able to bring them out of the land that he had promised them. So he brought them out to kill them in the desert because he hated them."
