אֵת

You must carefully follow every commandment I am giving you today, so that you may live and multiply, and enter and possess the land that the LORD swore to give your fathers.

Remember that these forty years the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments.

He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, walking in His ways and fearing Him.

When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you.

Be careful not to forget the LORD your God by failing to keep His commandments and ordinances and statutes, which I am giving you this day.

…then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You might say in your heart, “The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me.”

But remember that it is the LORD your God who gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm His covenant that He swore to your fathers even to this day.

If you ever forget the LORD your God and go after other gods to worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish.

Hear, O Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities fortified to the heavens.

When the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say in your heart, “Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land.” Rather, the LORD is driving out these nations before you because of their wickedness.

It is not because of your righteousness or uprightness of heart that you are going in to possess their land, but it is because of their wickedness that the LORD your God is driving out these nations before you, to keep the promise He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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

Remember this, and never forget how you provoked the LORD your God in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you reached this place, you have been rebelling against the LORD.

At Horeb you provoked the LORD, and He was angry enough to destroy you.

Then the LORD gave me the two stone tablets, inscribed by the finger of God with the exact words that the LORD spoke to you out of the fire on the mountain on the day of the assembly.

And at the end of forty days and forty nights, the LORD gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant.

The LORD also said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.

Leave Me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. Then I will make you into a nation mightier and greater than they are.”

And I saw how you had sinned against the LORD your God; you had made for yourselves a molten calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you.

For I was afraid of the anger and wrath that the LORD had directed against you, enough to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me this time as well.

And I took that sinful thing, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust, and I cast it into the stream that came down from the mountain.

You continued to provoke the LORD at Taberah, at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah.

And when the LORD sent you out from Kadesh-barnea, He said, “Go up and possess the land that I have given you.” But you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You neither believed Him nor obeyed Him.

You have been rebelling against the LORD since the day I came to know you.

So I fell down before the LORD for forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said He would destroy you.

Otherwise, those in the land from which You brought us out will say, ‘Because the LORD was not able to bring them into the land He had promised them, and because He hated them, He has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.’

And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and you are to place them in the ark.”

And the LORD wrote on the tablets what had been written previously, the Ten Commandments that He had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly. The LORD gave them to me,

…and I went back down the mountain and placed the tablets in the ark I had made, as the LORD had commanded me; and there they have remained.

At that time the LORD set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to serve Him, and to pronounce blessings in His name, as they do to this day.