25You shall consign the images of their gods to the fire; you shall not covet the silver and gold on them and keep it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared thereby; for that is abhorrent to the LORD your God. 26You must not bring an abhorrent thing into your house, or you will be proscribed like it; you must reject it as abominable and abhorrent, for it is proscribed.
8 You shall faithfully observe all the Instruction that I enjoin upon you today, that you may thrive and increase and be able to possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your fathers.
2Remember the long way that the LORD your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, that He might test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had ever known, in order to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the LORD decrees. 4The clothes upon you did not wear out, nor did your feet swell these forty years. 5Bear in mind that the LORD your God disciplines you just as a man disciplines his son. 6Therefore keep the commandments of the LORD your God: walk in His ways and revere Him.
7For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; 8a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; 9a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper. 10When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.
11Take care lest you forget the LORD your God and fail to keep His commandments, His rules, and His laws, which I enjoin upon you today. 12When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, 13and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, 14beware lesta your heart grow haughty and you forget the LORD your God—who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; 15who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraphb serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; 16who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end—17and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” 18Remember that it is the LORD your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant that He made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case.
19If you do forget the LORD your God and follow other gods to serve them or bow down to them, I warn you this day that you shall certainly perish; 20like the nations that the LORD will cause to perish before you, so shall you perish—because you did not heed the LORD your God.
9 Hear, O Israel! You are about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and more populous than you: great cities with walls sky-high; 2a people great and tall, the Anakites, of whom you have knowledge; for you have heard it said, “Who can stand up to the children of Anak?” 3Know then this day that none other than the LORD your God is crossing at your head, a devouring fire; it is He who will wipe them out. He will subdue them before you, that you may quickly dispossess and destroy them, as the LORD promised you. 4And when the LORD your God has thrust them from your path, say not to yourselves, “The LORD has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues”; it is rather because of the wickedness of those nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you. 5It is not because of your virtues and your rectitude that you will be able to possess their country; but it is because of their wickedness that the LORD your God is dispossessing those nations before you, and in order to fulfill the oath that the LORD made to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6Know, then, that it is not for any virtue of yours that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess; for you are a stiffnecked people. 7Remember, never forget, how you provoked the LORD your God to anger in the wilderness: from the day that you left the land of Egypt until you reached this place, you have continued defiant toward the LORD.
8At Horeb you so provoked the LORD that the LORD was angry enough with you to have destroyed you. 9I had ascended the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the Tablets of the Covenant that the LORD had made with you, and I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, eating no bread and drinking no water. 10And the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God, with the exact words that the LORD had addressed to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the Assembly.
11 At the end of those forty days and forty nights, the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the Tablets of the Covenant. 12And the LORD said to me, “Hurry, go down from here at once, for the people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted wickedly; they have been quick to stray from the path that I enjoined upon them; they have made themselves a molten image.” 13The LORD further said to me, “I see that this is a stiffnecked people. 14Let Me alone and I will destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make you a nation far more numerous than they.”
15I started down the mountain, a mountain ablaze with fire, the two Tablets of the Covenant in my two hands. 16I saw how you had sinned against the LORD your God: you had made yourselves a molten calf; you had been quick to stray from the path that the LORD had enjoined upon you. 17Thereupon I gripped the two tablets and flung them away with both my hands, smashing them before your eyes. 18I threw myself down before the LORD—eating no bread and drinking no water forty days and forty nights, as before—because of the great wrong you had committed, doing what displeased the LORD and vexing Him. 19For I was in dread of the LORD’s fierce anger against you, which moved Him to wipe you out. And that time, too, the LORD gave heed to me.—
20Moreover, the LORD was angry enough with Aaron to have destroyed him; so I also interceded for Aaron at that time.— 21As for that sinful thing you had made, the calf, I took it and put it to the fire; I broke it to bits and ground it thoroughly until it was fine as dust, and I threw its dust into the brook that comes down from the mountain.
22Again you provoked the LORD at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah.
23And when the LORD sent you on from Kadesh-barnea, saying, “Go up and take possession of the land that I am giving you,” you flouted the command of the LORD your God; you did not put your trust in Him and did not obey Him.
24As long as I have known you, you have been defiant toward the LORD.
25When I lay prostrate before the LORD a-those forty days and forty nights,-a because the LORD was determined to destroy you, 26I prayed to the LORD and said, “O Lord God, do not annihilate Your very own people, whom You redeemed in Your majesty and whom You freed from Egypt with a mighty hand. 27Give thought to Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and pay no heed to the stubbornness of this people, its wickedness, and its sinfulness. 28Else the country from which You freed us will say, ‘It was because the LORD was powerless to bring them into the land that He had promised them, and because He rejected them, that He brought them out to have them die in the wilderness.’ 29Yet they are Your very own people, whom You freed with Your great might and Your outstretched arm.”
10 Thereupon the LORD said to me, “Carve out two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain; and make an ark of wood. 2I will inscribe on the tablets the commandments that were on the first tablets that you smashed, and you shall deposit them in the ark.”
3I made an ark of acacia wood and
