The Wilderness Years

No, you are to remember ADONAI your God, because it is he who is giving you the power to get wealth, in order to confirm his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as is happening even today.

If you forget ADONAI your God, follow other gods and serve and worship them, I am warning you in advance today that you will certainly perish.

You will perish just like the nations that ADONAI is causing to perish ahead of you, because you will not have heeded the voice of ADONAI your God."

"Listen, Isra'el! You are to cross the Yarden today, to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, great cities fortified up to the sky;

a people great and tall, the 'Anakim, whom you know about and of whom you have heard it said, 'Who can stand before the descendants of 'Anak?'

Therefore understand today that ADONAI your God will himself cross ahead of you as a devouring fire; he will destroy them and bring them down before you. Thus will you drive them out and cause them to perish quickly, as ADONAI has said to you.

"Don't think to yourself, after your God has pushed them out ahead of you, 'It is to reward my righteousness that ADONAI has brought me in to take possession of this land.' No, it is because these nations have been so wicked that ADONAI is driving them out ahead of you.

It is not because of your righteousness, or because your heart is so upright, that you go in to take possession of their land; but to punish the wickedness of these nations that ADONAI your God is driving them out ahead of you, and also to confirm the word which ADONAI swore to your ancestors, Avraham, Yitz'chak and Ya'akov.

Therefore, understand that it is not for your righteousness that ADONAI your God is giving you this good land to possess. "For you are a stiffnecked people!

Remember, don't forget, how you made ADONAI your God angry in the desert. From the day you left the land of Egypt till you arrived at this place, you have been rebelling against ADONAI.

Also in Horev you made ADONAI angry -ADONAI was angry enough with you to destroy you!

I had gone up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets on which was written the covenant ADONAI had made with you. I stayed on the mountain forty days and nights without eating food or drinking water.

Then ADONAI gave me the two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God; and on them was written every word ADONAI had said to you from the fire on the mountain the day of the assembly.

Yes, after forty days and nights ADONAI gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant.

Then ADONAI said to me, 'Get up, and hurry down from here, because your people, whom you led out of Egypt, have become corrupt. So quickly have they turned aside from the way I ordered them to follow! They have made themselves a metal image!'

Moreover, ADONAI said to me, 'I have seen this people, and what a stiffnecked people they are!

Let me alone, so that I can put an end to them and blot out their name from under heaven! I will make out of you a nation bigger and stronger than they.'

I came down from the mountain. The mountain was blazing fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.

I looked, and there, you had sinned against ADONAI your God! You had made yourselves a metal calf, you had turned aside quickly from the way ADONAI had ordered you to follow.

I seized the two tablets, threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes.

Then I fell down before ADONAI, as I had the first time, for forty days and nights, during which time I neither ate food nor drank water, all because of the sin you committed by doing what was evil in the sight of ADONAI and thus provoking him.

I was terrified that because of how angry ADONAI was at you, of how heatedly displeased he was, that he would destroy you. But ADONAI listened to me that time too.

In addition, ADONAI was very angry with Aharon and would have destroyed him; but I prayed for Aharon also at the same time.

I took your sin, the calf you had made, and burned it up in the fire, beat it to pieces, and ground it up still smaller, until it was as fine as dust; then I threw its dust into the stream coming down from the mountain.

"Again at Tav'erah, Massah and Kivrot-HaTa'avah you made ADONAI angry;