Deuteronomy 7-10

Deuteronomy 7

¹When the Lord your God takes you into the land where you are going, which is to be your heritage, and has sent out the nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you;

²And when the Lord has given them up into your hands and you have overcome them, give them up to complete destruction: make no agreement with them, and have no mercy on them:

³Do not take wives or husbands from among them; do not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons.

⁴For through them your sons will be turned from me to the worship of other gods: and the Lord will be moved to wrath against you and send destruction on you quickly.

⁵But this is what you are to do to them: their altars are to be pulled down and their pillars broken, and their holy trees cut down and their images burned with fire.

⁶For you are a holy people to the Lord your God: marked out by the Lord your God to be his special people out of all the nations on the face of the earth.

⁷The Lord did not give you his love or take you for himself because you were more in number than any other people; for you were the smallest of the nations:

⁸But because of his love for you, and in order to keep his oath to your fathers, the Lord took you out with the strength of his hand, making you free from the prison-house and from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

⁹Be certain, then, that the Lord your God is God; whose faith and mercy are unchanging, who keeps his word through a thousand generations to those who have love for him and keep his laws;

¹⁰Rewarding his haters to their face with destruction; he will have no mercy on his hater, but will give him open punishment.

¹¹So keep the orders and the laws and the decisions which I give you today and do them.

¹²And it will be, that if you give attention to these decisions and keep and do them, then the Lord will keep his agreement with you and his mercy, as he said in his oath to your fathers.

¹³And he will give you his love, blessing you and increasing you: he will send his blessing on the offspring of your body and the fruit of your land, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock, in the land which by his oath to your fathers he undertook to give you.

¹⁴You will have greater blessings than any other people: no male or female among you or among your cattle will be without offspring.

¹⁵And the Lord will take away from you all disease, and will not put on you any of the evil diseases of Egypt which you have seen, but will put them on your haters.

¹⁶And you are to send destruction on all the peoples which the Lord your God gives into your hands; have no pity on them, and do not give worship to their gods; for that will be a cause of sin to you.

¹⁷If you say in your hearts, These nations are greater in number than we are: how are we to take their land from them?

¹⁸Have no fear of them, but keep well in mind what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt;

¹⁹The great punishments which your eyes saw, and the signs and the wonders and the strong hand and the stretched-out arm, by which the Lord your God took you out: so will the Lord your God do to all the peoples who are the cause of your fears.

²⁰And the Lord will send a hornet among them, till all the rest who have kept themselves safe from you in secret places have been cut off.

²¹Have no fear of them: for the Lord your God is with you, a great God greatly to be feared.

²²The Lord your God will send out the nations before you little by little; they are not to be rooted out quickly, for fear that the beasts of the field may be increased overmuch against you.

²³But the Lord your God will give them up into your hands, overpowering them till their destruction is complete.

²⁴He will give their kings into your hands, and you will put their names out of existence under heaven; there is not one of them who will not give way before you, till their destruction is complete.

²⁵The images of their gods are to be burned with fire: have no desire for the gold and silver on them, and do not take it for yourselves, for it will be a danger to you: it is a thing disgusting to the Lord your God:

²⁶And you may not take a disgusting thing into your house, and so become cursed with its curse: but keep yourselves from it, turning from it with fear and hate, for it is a cursed thing.

Deuteronomy 8

¹Take care to keep all the orders which I give you today, so that you may have life and be increased and go in and take as a heritage the land which the Lord, by his oath to your fathers, undertook to give you.

²And keep in mind the way by which the Lord your God has taken you through the waste land these forty years, so that he might make low your pride and put you to the test, to see what was in your heart and if you would keep his orders or not.

³And he made low your pride and let you be without food and gave you manna for your food, a thing new to you, which your fathers never saw; so that he might make it clear to you that bread is not man's only need, but his life is in every word which comes out of the mouth of the Lord.

⁴Through all these forty years your clothing did not get old or your feet become tired.

⁵Keep in mind this thought, that as a son is trained by his father, so you have been trained by the Lord your God.

⁶Then keep the orders of the Lord your God, fearing him and walking in his ways.

⁷For the Lord your God is guiding you into a good land, a land of water-springs, of fountains, and deep streams flowing out from the valleys and the hills;

⁸A land of grain and vines and fig-trees and fair fruits; a land of oil-giving olive-trees and honey;

⁹Where there will be bread for you in full measure and you will be in need of nothing; a land where the very stones are iron and from whose hills you may get copper.

¹⁰And you will have food enough and be full, praising the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

¹¹Then take care that you are not turned away from the Lord your God and from keeping his orders and decisions and laws which I give you this day:

¹²And when you have taken food and are full, and have made fair houses for yourselves and are living in them;

¹³And when your herds and your flocks are increased, and your stores of silver and gold, and you have wealth of every sort;

¹⁴Take care that your hearts are not lifted up in pride, giving no thought to the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house;

¹⁵Who was your guide through that great and cruel waste, where there were poison-snakes and scorpions and a dry land without water; who made water come out of the hard rock for you;

¹⁶Who gave you manna for your food in the waste land, a food which your fathers had never seen; so that your pride might be broken and your hearts tested for your good in the end;

¹⁷Say not then, in your hearts, My power and the strength of my hands have got me this wealth.

¹⁸But keep in mind the Lord your God: for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth, so that he may give effect to the agreement which he made by his oath with your fathers, as at this day.

¹⁹And it is certain that if at any time you are turned away from the Lord your God, and go after other gods, to be their servants and to give them worship, destruction will overtake you.

²⁰Like the nations which the Lord is cutting off before you, so you will be cut off; because you would not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 9

¹Give ear, O Israel: today you are to go over Jordan, to take the heritage of nations greater and stronger than yourselves, and towns of great size with walls as high as heaven;

²A people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, of whom you have knowledge and of whom it has been said, All are forced to give way before the sons of Anak.

³Be certain then today that it is the Lord your God who goes over before you like an all-burning fire; he will send destruction on them, crushing them before you; and you will send them in flight, putting an end to them quickly, as the Lord has said.

⁴And after the Lord has sent them in flight from before you, say not in your heart, Because of my righteousness the Lord has given me this land; when it is because of their evil-doing that the Lord is driving these nations out before you.

⁵Not for your righteousness or because your hearts are upright are you going in to take their land; but because of the evil-doing of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and to give effect to his oath to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

⁶Be certain then that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land as a reward for your righteousness; for you are a stiff-necked people.

⁷Keep well in mind how you made the Lord your God angry in the waste land; from the day when you went out of Egypt till you came to this place, you have gone against the orders of the Lord.

⁸Again in Horeb you made the Lord angry, and in his wrath he would have put an end to you.

⁹When I had gone up into the mountain to be given the stones on which was recorded the agreement which the Lord made with you, I was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights without taking food or drinking water.

¹⁰And the Lord gave me the two stones with writing on them done by the finger of God: on them were recorded all the words which the Lord said to you on the mountain out of the heart of the fire, on the day of the great meeting.

¹¹Then at the end of forty days and forty nights the Lord gave me those stones, the stones of the agreement.

¹²And the Lord said to me, Get up now, and go down quickly from this place; for the people you have taken out of Egypt have given themselves over to evil; they have quickly been turned from the way in which I gave them orders to go; they have made themselves a metal image.

¹³And then the Lord said to me, I have seen that this people is stiff-necked:

¹⁴Let me send destruction on them till their very name is cut off; and I will make of you a nation greater and stronger than they.

¹⁵So turning round I came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire; and the two stones of the agreement were in my hands.

¹⁶And I saw that you had done evil against the Lord, and had made for yourselves a metal image of a young ox: you had quickly been turned from the way in which the Lord had given you orders to go.

¹⁷And I let the stones go from my hands, and they were broken before your eyes.

¹⁸And I went down on my face before the Lord, as at the first, for forty days and forty nights, without taking food or drinking water, because of all your sin, in doing evil in the eyes of the Lord and moving him to wrath.

¹⁹For I was full of fear because of the wrath of the Lord which was burning against you, with your destruction in view. But again the Lord's ear was open to my prayer.

²⁰And the Lord, in his wrath, would have put Aaron to death: and I made prayer for Aaron at the same time.

²¹And I took your sin, the image which you had made, and put it in the fire and had it hammered and crushed very small till it was only dust: and the dust I put in the stream flowing down from the mountain.

²²Again at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you made the Lord angry.

²³And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, Go up and take the land which I have given you; you went against the orders of the Lord your God, and had no faith in him, and would not give ear to his voice.

²⁴From the day when I first had knowledge of you, you have gone against the word of the Lord.

²⁵So I went down on my face in prayer before the Lord for forty days and forty nights as I did at first; because the Lord had said that he would put an end to you.

²⁶And I made prayer to the Lord and said, O Lord God, do not send destruction on your people and your heritage, to whom, by your great power, you have given salvation, whom you have taken out of Egypt by the strength of your hand.

²⁷Keep in mind your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not looking at the hard heart of this people, or their evil-doing and their sin:

²⁸Or it may be said in the land from which you have taken them, Because the Lord was not able to take them into the land which he said he would give them, and because of his hate for them, he has taken them out to put them to death in the waste land.

²⁹But still they are your people and your heritage, whom you took out by your great power and by your stretched-out arm.

Deuteronomy 10

¹At that time the Lord said to me, Make two other stones, cut like the first two, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood.

²And I will put on the stones the words which were on the first stones which were broken by you, and you are to put them into the ark.

³So I made an ark of hard wood, and had two stones cut like the others, and went up the mountain with the stones in my hands.

⁴And he put on the stones, as in the first writing, the ten rules which the Lord gave you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the great meeting: and the Lord gave the stones to me.

⁵And turning round I came down from the mountain and put the stones in the ark which I had made; and there they are as the Lord gave me orders.

⁶(And the children of Israel went on from Beeroth Bene-jaakan to Moserah: there death came to Aaron and he was put to rest in the earth; and Eleazar, his son, took his place as priest.

⁷From there they went on to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land of streams of water.

⁸At that time the Lord had the tribe of Levi marked out to take up the ark of the Lord's agreement, to be before the Lord and to do his work and to give blessings in his name, to this day.

⁹For this reason Levi has no part or heritage for himself among his brothers: the Lord is his heritage, as the Lord your God said to him.)

¹⁰And I was in the mountain, as at the first time, for forty days and forty nights; and again the ears of the Lord were open to my prayer, and he did not send destruction on you.

¹¹Then the Lord said to me, Get up and go on your journey before the people, so that they may go in and take the land which I said in my oath to their fathers that I would give them.

¹²And now, Israel, what would the Lord your God have you do, but to go in the fear of the Lord your God, walking in all his ways and loving him and doing his pleasure with all your heart and all your soul,

¹³Doing the orders of the Lord and keeping his laws which I give you this day for your good?

¹⁴The Lord your God is ruler of heaven, of the heaven of heavens, and of the earth with everything in it.

¹⁵But the Lord had delight in your fathers and love for them, marking out for himself their seed after them, even you, from all peoples, as at this day.

¹⁶Let your circumcision be of the heart, and put away your pride.

¹⁷For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, strong in power and greatly to be feared, who has no respect for any man's position and takes no rewards:

¹⁸Judging uprightly in the cause of the widow and of the child who has no father, and giving food and clothing in his mercy to the man from a strange country.

¹⁹So be kind to the man from a strange country who is living among you, for you yourselves were living in a strange country in the land of Egypt.

²⁰Let the fear of the Lord your God be before you, give him worship and be true to him at all times, taking your oaths in his name.

²¹He is your God, the God of your praise, your God who has done for you all these works of power which your eyes have seen.

²²Your fathers went down into Egypt with seventy persons; and now the Lord your God has made you like the stars of heaven in number.