Theological Justification of the Conquest
1Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you who live in large cities with extremely high fortifications.
2They include the Anakites, a numerous and tall people whom you know about and of whom it is said, “Who is able to resist the Anakites?”
3Understand today that the
4Do not think to yourself after the
5It is not because of your righteousness, or even your inner uprightness, that you have come here to possess their land. Instead, because of the wickedness of these nations the
6Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the
The History of Israel’s Stubbornness
7Remember – don’t ever forget – how you provoked the
8At Horeb you provoked him and he was angry enough with you to destroy you.
9When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the
10The
11Now at the end of the forty days and nights the
12And he said to me, “Get up, go down at once from here because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have sinned! They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a cast metal image.”
13Moreover, he said to me, “I have taken note of these people; they are a stubborn lot!
14Stand aside and I will destroy them, obliterating their very name from memory, and I will make you into a stronger and more numerous nation than they are.”
15So I turned and went down the mountain while it was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.
16When I looked, you had indeed sinned against the
17I grabbed the two tablets, threw them down, and shattered them before your very eyes.
18Then I again fell down before the
19For I was terrified at the
20The
21As for your sinful thing that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.
22Moreover, you continued to provoke the
23And when he sent you from Kadesh-Barnea and told you, “Go up and possess the land I have given you,” you rebelled against the
24You have been rebelling against him from the very first day I knew you!
Moses’ Plea on Behalf of the
25I lay flat on the ground before the
26I prayed to him: O, Lord
27Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; ignore the stubbornness, wickedness, and sin of these people.
28Otherwise the people of the land from which you brought us will say, “The
29They are your people, your valued property, whom you brought out with great strength and power.
<< Deuteronomy 9 >>
