The Living Bible (60 page)

Deuteronomy
8

“You must obey all the commandments I give you today. If you do, you will not only live, you will multiply and will go in and take over the land promised to your fathers by the Lord.
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 Do you remember how the Lord led you through the wilderness for all those forty years, humbling you and testing you to find out how you would respond, and whether or not you would really obey him?
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 Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to both you and your ancestors. He did it to help you realize that food isn’t everything, and that real life comes by obeying every command of God.
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 For all these forty years your clothes haven’t grown old, and your feet haven’t been blistered or swollen.
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 So you should realize that, as a man punishes his son, the Lord punishes you to help you.

    
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 “Obey the laws of the Lord your God. Walk in his ways and fear him.
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 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land of brooks, pools, gushing springs, valleys, and hills;
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 it is a land of wheat and barley, of grapevines, fig trees, pomegranates, olives, and honey;
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 it is a land where food is plentiful, and nothing is lacking; it is a land where iron is as common as stone, and copper is abundant in the hills.
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 When you have eaten your fill, bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

    
¹¹
 “But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty
*
you don’t forget the Lord your God and begin to disobey him.
^12-13
 For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, and when your flocks and herds have become very large, and your silver and gold have multiplied,
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 that is the time to watch out that you don’t become proud and forget the Lord your God who brought you out of your slavery in the land of Egypt.
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 Beware that you don’t forget the God who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with the dangerous snakes and scorpions, where it was so hot and dry. He gave you water from the rock!
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 He fed you with manna in the wilderness (it was a kind of bread unknown before) so that you would become humble and so that your trust in him would grow, and he could do you good.
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 He did it so that you would never feel that it was your own power and might that made you wealthy.
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 Always remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you power to become rich, and he does it to fulfill his promise to your ancestors.

    
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 “But if you forget about the Lord your God and worship other gods instead, and follow evil ways, you shall certainly perish,
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 just as the Lord has caused other nations in the past to perish. That will be your fate, too, if you don’t obey the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy
9

“O Israel, listen! Today you are to cross the Jordan River and begin to dispossess the nations on the other side. Those nations are much greater and more powerful than you are! They live in high walled cities. Among them are the famed Anak giants, against whom none can stand!
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 But the Lord your God will go before you as a devouring fire to destroy them, so that you will quickly conquer them and drive them out.

    
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 “Then, when the Lord has done this for you, don’t say to yourselves, ‘The Lord has helped us because we are so good!’ No, it is because of the wickedness of the other nations that he is doing it.
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 It is not at all because you are such fine, upright people that the Lord will drive them out from before you! I say it again, it is only because of the wickedness of the other nations, and because of his promises to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that he will do it.
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 I say it yet again:
Jehovah your God is not giving you this good land because you are good, for you are not—
you are a wicked, stubborn people.

    
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 “Don’t you remember (oh, never forget it!) how continually angry you made the Lord your God out in the wilderness, from the day you left Egypt until now? For all this time you have constantly rebelled against him.

    
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 “Don’t you remember how angry you made him at Mount Horeb? He was ready to destroy you.
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 I was on the mountain at the time, receiving the contract which Jehovah had made with you—the stone tablets with the laws inscribed upon them. I was there for forty days and forty nights, and all that time I ate nothing. I didn’t even take a drink of water.
^10-11
 At the end of those forty days and nights the Lord gave me the contract, the tablets on which he had written the commandments he had spoken from the fire-covered mountain while the people had watched below.
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 He told me to go down quickly because the people I had led out of Egypt had defiled themselves, quickly turning away from the laws of God, and had made an idol from molten metal.

    
^13-14
 “‘Let me alone that I may destroy this evil, stubborn people!’ the Lord told me, ‘and I will blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make a mighty nation of you, mightier and greater than they are.’

    
¹⁵
 “I came down from the burning mountain, holding in my hands the two tablets inscribed with the laws of God.
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 There below me I could see the calf you had made in your terrible sin against the Lord your God. How quickly you turned away from him!
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 I lifted the tablets high above my head and dashed them to the ground! I smashed them before your eyes!
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 Then, for another forty days and nights I lay before the Lord, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for you had done what the Lord hated most, thus provoking him to great anger.
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 How I feared for you—for the Lord was ready to destroy you. But that time, too, he listened to me.
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 Aaron was in great danger because the Lord was so angry with him; but I prayed, and the Lord spared him.
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 I took your sin—the calf you had made—and burned it and ground it into fine dust, and threw it into the stream that cascaded out of the mountain.

    
²²
 “Again at Taberah and once again at Massah you angered the Lord, and yet again at Kibroth-hattaavah.
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 At Kadesh-barnea, when the Lord told you to enter the land he had given you, you rebelled and wouldn’t believe that he would help you; you refused to obey him.
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 Yes, you have been rebellious against the Lord from the first day I knew you.
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 That is why I fell down before him for forty days and nights when the Lord was ready to destroy you.

    
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 “I prayed to him, ‘O Lord God, don’t destroy your own people. They are your inheritance saved from Egypt by your mighty power and glorious strength.
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 Don’t notice the rebellion and stubbornness of these people, but remember instead your promises to your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Oh, please overlook the awful wickedness and sin of these people.
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 For if you destroy them, the Egyptians will say, “It is because the Lord wasn’t able to bring them to the land he promised them,” or “He destroyed them because he hated them: he brought them into the wilderness to slay them.”
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 They are your people and your inheritance that you brought from Egypt by your great power and your mighty arm.’

Deuteronomy
10

“At that time the Lord told me to cut two more stone tablets like the first ones, and to make a wooden Ark to keep them in, and to return to God on the mountain.
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 He said he would rewrite on the tablets the same commandments that were on the tablets I had smashed, and that I should place them in the Ark.
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 So I made an Ark of acacia wood and hewed out two stone tablets like the first two, and took the tablets up on the mountain to God.
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 He again wrote the Ten Commandments on them and gave them to me. (They were the same commandments he had given you from the heart of the fire on the mountain as you all watched below.)
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 Then I came down and placed the tablets in the Ark I had made, where they are to this day, just as the Lord commanded me.

    
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 “The people of Israel then journeyed from Beeroth of Bene-jaakan to Moserah, where Aaron died and was buried. His son Eleazar became the next priest.

    
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 “Then they journeyed to Gudgodah, and from there to Jotbathah, a land of brooks and water.
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 It was there that Jehovah set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark containing the Ten Commandments of Jehovah, and to stand before the Lord and to do his work and to bless his name, just as is done today.
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 (That is why the tribe of Levi does not have a portion of land reserved for it in the Promised Land, as their brother tribes do; for as the Lord told them, he himself is their inheritance.)

    
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 “As I said before, I stayed on the mountain before the Lord for forty days and nights the second time, just as I had the first, and the Lord again yielded to my pleas and didn’t destroy you.

    
¹¹
 “But he said to me, ‘Arise and lead the people to the land I promised their fathers. It is time to go in and possess it.’

    
^12-13
 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you except to listen carefully to all he says to you, and to obey for your own good the commandments I am giving you today, and to love him, and to worship him with all your hearts and souls?
¹⁴
 Earth and highest heaven belong to the Lord your God.
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 And yet he rejoiced in your fathers and loved them so much that he chose you, their children, to be above every other nation, as is evident today.
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 Therefore, cleanse your sinful hearts and stop your stubbornness.

    
¹⁷
 “Jehovah your God is God of gods and Lord of lords. He is the great and mighty God, the God of terror who shows no partiality and takes no bribes.
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 He gives justice to the fatherless and widows. He loves foreigners and gives them food and clothing.
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 (You too must love foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt.)
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 You must fear the Lord your God and worship him and cling to him, and take oaths by his name alone.
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 He is your praise and he is your God, the one who has done mighty miracles you yourselves have seen.
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 When your ancestors went down into Egypt there were only seventy of them, but now the Lord your God has made you as many as the stars in the sky!