Study Desk

"Now this is the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you may do them in the land where you are going over to take possession of it,

"For they will turn your sons away from following Me, and they will serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you.

"Otherwise, you may say in your heart, 'My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.'

"Do not say in your heart when the LORD your God has driven them away from you, 'Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to take possession of this land.' Rather, it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you.

"The LORD gave me the two tablets of stone written by the finger of God; and on them were all the words which the LORD had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.

"It came about at the end of forty days and nights that the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.

"Then the LORD said to me, 'Arise, go down from here quickly, because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have behaved corruptly. They have quickly turned aside from the way that I commanded them; they have made a cast metal image for themselves.'

"The LORD also said to me, 'I have seen this people, and indeed, it is a stubborn people.

'Leave Me alone, that I may destroy them and wipe out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.'

"For I was afraid of the anger and the rage with which the LORD was angry with you so as to destroy you; but the LORD listened to me that time as well.

"At that time the LORD said to me, 'Cut out for yourself two tablets of stone like the first two, and come up to Me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood for yourself.

"Then He wrote on the tablets, like the first writing, the Ten Commandments which the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly; and the LORD gave them to me.

"Then I turned and came down from the mountain, and I put the tablets in the ark which I had made; and they are there, just as the LORD commanded me."

"I, moreover, stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights like the first time, and the LORD listened to me that time also; the LORD was not willing to destroy you.

"Then the LORD said to me, 'Arise, proceed on your journey ahead of the people, so that they may go in and take possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.'

"When you enter the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and you take possession of it and live in it, and you say, 'I will appoint a king over me like all the nations who are around me,'

"The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen; to him you shall listen.

"This is in accordance with everything that you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, 'Do not let me hear the voice of the LORD my God again, and do not let me see this great fire anymore, or I will die!'

"And the LORD said to me, 'They have spoken well.

"But if the man does not desire to take his brother's widow, then his brother's widow shall go up to the gate to the elders, and say, 'My husband's brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.'