5aItis not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out from before you, and that He may1 fulfill the bword which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 Therefore understand that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a astiff-necked people.
7 “Remember! Do not forget how you aprovoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. bFrom the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord.
8 Also ain Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, so that the Lord was angry enough with you to have destroyed you.
9aWhen I went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and bforty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water.
10aThen the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire bin the day of the assembly.
11 And it came to pass, at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.
12 “Then the Lord said to me, a‘Arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly; they have bquickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made themselves a molded image.’
13 “Furthermore athe Lord spoke to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed bthey are a stiff-necked people.
14aLet Me alone, that I may destroy them and bblot out their name from under heaven; cand I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’
15a“So I turned and came down from the mountain, and bthe mountain burned with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.
16 And aI looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God—had made for yourselves a molded calf! You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you.
17 Then I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and abroke them before your eyes.
18 And I afell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.
19aFor I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was angry with you, to destroy you. bBut the Lord listened to me at that time also.
20 And the Lord was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him; so I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.
21 Then I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it and ground it very small, until it was as fine as dust; and I athrew its dust into the brook that descended from the mountain.
22 “Also at aTaberah and bMassah and cKibroth Hattaavah you provoked the Lord to wrath.
23 Likewise, awhen the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, ‘Go up and possess the land which I have given you,’ then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and byou did not believe Him nor obey His voice.
24aYou have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.
25a“Thus I1 prostrated myself before the Lord; forty days and forty nights I kept prostrating myself, because the Lord had said He would destroy you.
26 Therefore I prayed to the Lord, and said: ‘O Lord God, do not destroy Your people and aYour inheritance whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
27 Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look on the stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin,
DEUTERONOMY, the second law, a title which plainly shows what is the object of this book, namely, a recapitulation of the law. It was given in the form of public addresses to the people; and as Moses spoke in the prospect of his speedy removal, he enforced obedience to it by many forcible appeals to the Israelites, concerning their long and varied experience both of the mercies and the judgments of God. The minute notices of the heathen people with whom they had come in contact, but who afterward disappeared from the pages of history, as well as the accounts of the fertility and products of Canaan, and the counsels respecting the conquest of that country, fix the date of this book and the time of its composition by the hand of Moses. The close, however, must have been added by another; and, indeed, it is supposed by some to have formed the original preface to the Book of Joshua.
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