1“Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified (walled) up to heaven, 2A people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said ‘Who can stand before the descendants of Anak!’ 3But understand today that the LORD your God is the One Who goes before you; like a consuming fire. He will subdue them before your face. You must drive them out, and annihilate them quickly, as the LORD has told you. 4After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘For my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land’: but it is rather for the wickedness of these nations, that the LORD is driving them out for you. 5Not because of your righteousness, or for the integrity of your heart are you going to possess their land; but because of the wickedness of these nations, the LORD your God will drive them out from before you, and that He may fulfill the word that He promised to your fathers - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 6Understand, then, that the LORD your God does not give you this good land because of your righteousness; for you are a stubborn people.

7“Remember - and never forget - how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day you left Egypt, until you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the LORD. 8And at Horeb, you provoked the LORD to wrath, so that He was angry enough with you to have destroyed you. 9When I had gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone of the covenant which the LORD made with you, I stayed on the mount forty days and nights, I ate no bread nor drank water: 10And the LORD delivered to me two tables of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written all the commandments, which the LORD had spoken to you on the mount out of the blazing fire on the day of the assembly. 11And at the end of forty days and nights, the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the tables of the covenant. 12And the LORD told me, ‘Get yourself down quickly from here; because the people you brought up out of Egypt have corrupted themselves; they have so soon turned away from the way which I commanded them; and have made themselves a molten image.’ 13And the LORD said further to me, ‘I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked, rebellious people. 14Let Me alone, so that I may destroy them, and blot their name out from under heaven; and I will make of you (Moses) a nation mightier and greater than they.’ 15So I turned and came down from the mount, and the mount burned with fire: and the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands. 16And then I looked and saw that you had sinned against the LORD your God, and had made a melted calf; you had quickly turned aside out of the way which the LORD had commanded you. 17And I threw the two tables out of my two hands, and they broke before your eyes. 18And I again fell prostrate before the LORD, as at the first, for forty days and nights: I ate no bread, nor drank water, because of all your sins which you committed, in doing so wickedly in the eyes of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger. 19For I feared the anger and hot wrath of the LORD: that He would destroy you. But the LORD also listened to me at that time. 20And the LORD was also angry enough with Aaron to have, and would have, destroyed him; and I also prayed for Aaron at that time. 21And I took your sin, the calf that you had made, and burned it, stamped it, and ground it into powder, as small as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that flowed down the mountain.

22“And at Taberah, at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah, you also provoked the LORD to wrath. 23And when the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea, and He said, ‘Go up and possess the land that I have given you.’, you again rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God, and did not believe Him, or obey His voice. 24You have been rebellious against the LORD as long as I have known you.

25“Thus I lay prostate before the LORD for forty days and nights, as I did before; because the LORD had said He would destroy you. 26And so I prayed to the LORD, and said, ‘O LORD God, do not destroy Your people and Your inheritance, whom You have redeemed by Your power, and have brought up out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 27Remember Your servants - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and look beyond the stubbornness, wickedness, and sin of this people, 28Or the people that You brought us out from will 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 kill them in the wilderness.’ 29Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out by Your mighty power and by Your outstretched arm.