The Wilderness Years

the great trials that you saw, the signs and wonders, and the mighty hand and outstretched arm by which the LORD your God brought you out. The LORD your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear.

Moreover, the LORD your God will send the hornet against them until even the survivors hiding from you have perished.

Do not be terrified by them, for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God.

The LORD your God will drive out these nations before you little by little. You will not be enabled to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals would multiply around you.

But the LORD your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed.

He will hand their kings over to you, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand against you; you will annihilate them.

You must burn up the images of their gods; do not covet the silver and gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it; for it is detestable to the LORD your God.

And you must not bring any detestable thing into your house, or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction. You are to utterly detest and abhor it, because it is set apart for destruction.

You must carefully follow every commandment I am giving you today, so that you may live and multiply, and enter and possess the land that the LORD swore to give your fathers.

Remember that these forty years the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments.

He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

Your clothing did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.

So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, walking in His ways and fearing Him.

For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks and fountains and springs that flow through the valleys and hills;

a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey;

a land where you will eat food without scarcity, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and whose hills are ready to be mined for copper.

When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you.

Be careful not to forget the LORD your God by failing to keep His commandments and ordinances and statutes, which I am giving you this day.

Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses in which to dwell,

and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all that you have is multiplied,

then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

He led you through the vast and terrifying wilderness with its venomous snakes and scorpions, a thirsty and waterless land. He brought you water from the rock of flint.

He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers had not known, in order to humble you and test you, so that in the end He might cause you to prosper.

You might say in your heart, “The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me.”