Study Desk

for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God. Otherwise, the Lord your God will become angry with you and obliterate you from the face of the earth.

The Lord commanded us to follow all these statutes and to fear the Lord our God for our prosperity always and for our preservation, as it is today.

You must not intermarry with them, and you must not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,

For you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.

“The Lord had his heart set on you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.

Know that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps his gracious covenant loyalty for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commands.

You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God is delivering over to you and not look on them with pity. Do not worship their gods, for that will be a snare to you.

Don’t be terrified of them, for the Lord your God, a great and awesome God, is among you.

The Lord your God will drive out these nations before you little by little. You will not be able to destroy them all at once; otherwise, the wild animals will become too numerous for you.

Burn up the carved images of their gods. Don’t covet the silver and gold on the images and take it for yourself, or else you will be ensnared by it, for it is detestable to the Lord your God.

Do not bring any detestable thing into your house, or you will be set apart for destruction like it. You are to abhor and detest it utterly because it is set apart for destruction.

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams, springs, and deep water sources, flowing in both valleys and hills;

When you eat and are full, you will bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

He led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, a thirsty land where there was no water. He brought water out of the flint rock for you.

You may say to yourself, ‘My power and my own ability have gained this wealth for me,’

Understand that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people.

“The Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go down immediately from here. For your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly. They have quickly turned from the way that I commanded them; they have made a cast image for themselves.’

I saw how you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made a calf image for yourselves. You had quickly turned from the way the Lord had commanded for you.

I fell down like the first time in the presence of the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I did not eat food or drink water because of all the sin you committed, doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and angering him.

The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. But I prayed for Aaron at that time also.