The Wilderness Years

the great ordeals which you yourself saw, and the signs, wonders, strong hand and outstretched arm by which ADONAI your God brought you out. ADONAI will do the same to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.

Moreover, ADONAI your God will send the hornet among them until those who are left and those who hide themselves perish ahead of you.

You are not to be frightened of them, because ADONAI your God is there with you, a God great and fearsome.

ADONAI your God will expel those nations ahead of you little by little; you can't put an end to them all at once, or the wild animals will become too numerous for you.

Nevertheless, ADONAI your God will give them over to you, sending one disaster after another upon them until they have been destroyed.

He will hand their kings over to you, and you will wipe out their name from under heaven; none of them will be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them.

You are to burn up completely the carved statues of their gods. Don't be greedy for the silver or gold on them; don't take it with you, or you will be trapped by it; for it is abhorrent to ADONAI your God.

Don't bring something abhorrent into your house, or you will share in the curse that is on it; instead, you are to detest it completely, loathe it utterly; for it is set apart for destruction.

"All the mitzvot I am giving you today you are to take care to obey, so that you will live, increase your numbers, enter and take possession of the land ADONAI swore about to your ancestors.

You are to remember everything of the way in which ADONAI led you these forty years in the desert, humbling and testing you in order to know what was in your heart - whether you would obey his mitzvot or not.

He humbled you, allowing you to become hungry, and then fed you with man, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, to make you understand that a person does not live on food alone but on everything that comes from the mouth of ADONAI.

During these forty years the clothing you were wearing didn't grow old, and your feet didn't swell up.

Think deeply about it: ADONAI was disciplining you, just as a man disciplines his child.

So obey the mitzvot of ADONAI your God, living as he directs and fearing him.

For ADONAI your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams, springs and water welling up from the depths in valleys and on hillsides.

It is a land of wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey;

a land where you will eat food in abundance and lack nothing in it; a land where the stones contain iron and the hills can be mined for copper.

So you will eat and be satisfied, and you will bless ADONAI your God for the good land he has given you.

"Be careful not to forget ADONAI your God by not obeying his mitzvot, rulings and regulations that I am giving you today.

Otherwise, after you have eaten and are satisfied, built fine houses and lived in them,

and increased your herds, flocks, silver, gold and everything else you own,

you will become proud-hearted. Forgetting ADONAI your God - who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you lived as slaves;

who led you through the vast and fearsome desert, with its poisonous snakes, scorpions and waterless, thirsty ground; who brought water out of flint rock for you;

who fed you in the desert with man, unknown to your ancestors; all the while humbling and testing you in order to do you good in the end -

you will think to yourself, 'My own power and the strength of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.'