1. Hear, O Israel! You are now about to cross the Jordan to enter in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than yourselves, having large cities fortified to the heavens,
2. the Anakim, a people great and tall. You yourselves know of them and have heard it said of them, “Who can stand up against the Anakim?”
3. Know, then, today that it is the Lord, your God, who will cross over before you as a consuming fire; he it is who will destroy them and subdue them before you, so that you can dispossess and remove them quickly, as the Lord promised you.
4. After the Lord, your God, has driven them out of your way, do not say in your heart, “It is because of my justice the Lord has brought me in to possess this land, and because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord is dispossessing them before me.”
5. No, it is not because of your justice or the integrity of your heart that you are going in to take possession of their land; but it is because of their wickedness that the Lord, your God, is dispossessing these nations before you and in order to fulfill the promise he made on oath to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6. Know this, therefore: it is not because of your justice that the Lord, your God, is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.
7. Remember and do not forget how you angered the Lord, your God, in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious toward the Lord.
8. At Horeb you so provoked the Lord that he was angry enough to destroy you,
9. when I had gone up the mountain to receive the stone tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you. Meanwhile I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate no food and drank no water.
10. The Lord gave me the two stone tablets inscribed, by God’s own finger, with a copy of all the words that the Lord spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.
11. Then, at the end of the forty days and forty nights, when the Lord had given me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant,
12. the Lord said to me, Go down from here now, quickly, for your people whom you have brought out of Egypt are acting corruptly; they have already turned aside from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a molten idol.
13. I have seen now how stiff-necked this people is, the Lord said to me.
14. Let me be, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under the heavens. I will then make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.
15. When I had come down again from the blazing, fiery mountain, with the two tablets of the covenant in both my hands,