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¹ HEAR, O Israel: You are to cross the Jordan this day, to go in to destroy nations greater and mightier than yourselves, cities great and fenced up to heaven,² A people great and tall, the sons of giants, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, No man can stand up before the giants!³ And that you may know therefore this day that the LORD your God is he who will go over before you; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall defeat them before you; so that you shall rout them, and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you.⁴ Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has defeated them from before you, It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is destroying them from before you.⁵ It is not because of your righteousness, or for the uprightness of your heart, that you are going in to possess their land; but it is because of the sins of these nations the LORD your God is destroying them from before you, and that he may perform the word which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.⁶ Know therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess it; for you are a stiffnecked people.

⁷ Remember, and forget not, how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness; from the day that you came out of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.⁸ Also in Horeb you provoked the LORD to wrath, so the LORD was angry enough with you to have destroyed you.⁹ When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the LORD made with you, and I abode on the mountain forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water;¹⁰ And the LORD gave me two tablets of stone, written with the finger of God; and on them were written all the words which the LORD had spoken with you in the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.¹¹ And at the end of forty days and forty nights, the LORD gave me two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.¹² And the LORD said to me, Arise and go down quickly from here; for your people whom you have brought forth out of Egypt have corrupted themselves; they have quickly turned aside out of the way which I commanded them; and they have made themselves a molten image.¹³ Furthermore the LORD said to me, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiffnecked people:¹⁴ Now let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.¹⁵ So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.¹⁶ And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the LORD your God, and had made to yourselves a molten calf; and you had turned aside quickly out of the way which the LORD your God had commanded you.¹⁷ And I took the two tablets, and cast them out of my two hands, and broke them before your eyes.¹⁸ Then I prayed before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I did neither eat bread nor drink water, because of all your sins which you sinned, in doing evil in the presence of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.¹⁹ For I was afraid of the wrath and the anger wherewith the LORD was angry against you to destroy you. But the LORD hearkened to me at that time also.²⁰ And the LORD was angry enough with Aaron to have destroyed him; and I prayed for Aaron also the same time.²¹ And I took the calf by which you sinned, which you had made, and burned it with fire, and ground it very small, until it was as fine as dust; and I threw the dust of it into the brook that flowed down out of the mountain.²² And in heat, and in trials, and at the Kabrey di ragrigtha the people lusted for meat; you provoked the LORD to anger.²³ Likewise when the LORD sent you from Rakim-gia, and said to you, Go up and possess the land which I have given you; then you rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God, and you did not believe him, nor hearken to his voice.²⁴ You have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew you.²⁵ Thus I prayed before the LORD forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said he would destroy you.²⁶ I prayed therefore before the LORD, and said, O LORD God, destroy not thy people and thy inheritance, whom thou hast saved through thy greatness, whom thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand.²⁷ But remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; look not to the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sins;²⁸ Lest the inhabitants of the land out of which thou didst bring them say, Because the LORD was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness.²⁹ Yet they are thy people and thy inheritance, whom thou broughtest out by thy mighty power and by thy outstretched arm.