¹Hear, O Israel, you are crossing the Jordan today, to enter to dispossess nations greater and stronger than yourself with cities which are large and fortified to the sky. ²The sons of the Anakites are a large and tall people whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand in the face of the sons of Anak?’ ³So know today that the Lord your God is he who is crossing in front of you – a consuming fire. He will destroy them and he will subdue them at your advance, and you will dispossess them and destroy them quickly as the Lord has told you. ⁴Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God drives them out at your advance, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord brought me to take possession of this land’; rather it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them at your advance. ⁵It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are entering in to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is dispossessing them at your advance, and in order to establish the word which the Lord swore to your fathers – to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. ⁶And you will know that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people. ⁷Remember – do not forget – that by which you provoked the Lord your God to anger in the desert. From the day when you came out of the land of Egypt up to your coming to this place, you have been rebelling against the Lord. ⁸At Horeb you provoked the Lord to anger, and the Lord became angry with you to the point of destroying you. ⁹When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets – the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you – I remained in the mountain for forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and I drank no water. ¹⁰And the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, written by the finger of God, and on them was a record of all the words which the Lord spoke with you at the mountain from the middle of the fire on the day of the convocation. ¹¹And it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights that the Lord gave me the two stone tablets – the tablets of the covenant. ¹²And the Lord said to me, ‘Arise and go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly. They have quickly departed from the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a cast image.’ ¹³And the Lord spoke to me and said, ‘I have seen this people, and look, it is a stiff-necked people. ¹⁴Leave off me, and I will destroy them, and I will blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make you into a more powerful and numerous people than them.’ ¹⁵Then I turned and went down from the mountain, while the mountain was burning with fire, and I had the two tablets of the covenant in my two hands. ¹⁶And I looked, and what I saw was that you had sinned against the Lord your God – you had made yourselves a cast calf. You had quickly departed from the way which the Lord commanded you. ¹⁷Then I took hold of the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them in your sight, ¹⁸and I fell down before the Lord as at first, for forty days and forty nights. I did not eat bread and I did not drink water for all your sin by which you sinned in doing wrong in the eyes of the Lord, so as to provoke him to anger. ¹⁹For I was afraid because of the anger and fury by which the Lord had become irate over you to the point of destroying you, but the Lord listened to me that time too. ²⁰Nevertheless, the Lord became very angry with Aaron, to the point of destroying him, but I prayed for Aaron too at that time. ²¹And as for your sin in that you made the calf, I took it and burnt it in fire and crushed it and ground it down until it was as fine as dust, then I cast its dust into the brook which went down the mountain. ²²And in Taberah and in Massah and in Kibroth-Hattaavah you provoked the Lord to anger, ²³and when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-Barnea, saying, ‘Go up and take possession of the land which I have given you’, you rebelled against the word of the Lord your God, and you did not believe him, nor did you obey him. ²⁴You have been rebelling against the Lord since the day I first knew you. ²⁵So I fell down before the Lord for the forty days and forty nights, during which I was fallen down, for the Lord had said that he was on the point of destroying you. ²⁶And I prayed to the Lord, and I said, ‘My Lord the Lord, do not destroy your people and your inheritance whom you redeemed by your greatness when you brought them out of Egypt with a strong hand. ²⁷Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Do not pay attention to the stubbornness of this people or to their wickedness or to their sin, ²⁸so that people do not say that it is because the Lord is not able to bring them from the land out of which you brought us, to the land which he told them, and that because of his hatred of them he brought them out to kill them in the desert. ²⁹And they are your people and your inheritance whom you brought out by your great strength and with your outstretched arm.’