1“Listen, Israel: you’re crossing the Jordan today to come to dispossess nations bigger and stronger than you, big cities and fortified to the skies,
2a people big and tall, giants, of whom you have known, and of whom you have heard it said: ‘Who can stand in front of the giants?!’
3So you shall know today that YHWH, your God: He is the one who is crossing in front of you, a consuming fire. He will destroy them, and He will subdue them in front of you, so you’ll dispossess them and destroy them quickly as YHWH has spoken to you.
4“Don’t say in your heart when YHWH pushes them from in front of you, saying, ‘Because of my virtue YHWH has brought me to take possession of this land,’ when it is because of these nations’ wickedness that YHWH dispossesses them from before you.
9:4. take possession. Forms of this term occur more than sixty times in Deuteronomy. Here it is linked specifically to the promise to the patriarchs. This brings back to mind Abraham’s exchange with YHWH just before their covenant, where this word occurs three times. Abraham says that he is childless, so someone else will “take possession” of what is his, but God assures him that his own offspring will “take possession” from him (Gen 15:3–4). The numerous repetitions of the term convey the central importance of the link and continuity between the episodes of the patriarchs’ lives and the fate of their descendants.
5It’s not because of your virtue and your heart’s integrity that you’re coming to take possession of their land, but it is because of these nations’ wickedness that YHWH, your God, dispossesses them from before you, and in order to uphold the thing that YHWH swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
9:5. not because of your virtue. The point is made three times, in three verses in a row (9:4–6): it is not because of your virtue but rather because of these nations’ wickedness. Some think that the repetition is just a scribe’s error, repeating a line by mistake. (Such errors are known as dittography.) That is possible, but the repetition itself is not sufficient reason to make that conclusion. On the contrary, the text seems to me precisely to be making the point as emphatically as possible. Moses notes the people’s own lack of virtue even more strongly in the next verse (7) and he begins with the words “Remember—don’t forget!” which is redundant as well but is certainly done on purpose for emphasis. And he then goes on for the rest of the chapter listing the people’s record of rebellions. Moses thus gives a powerful warning against chauvinism and self-congratulation. And this also provides a profound balance to the declaration that Israel was chosen to become a treasured people, which came just two chapters earlier (7:6). Possession of the land is the result of a promise to Israel’s ancestors. Status as a treasured people depends on actions: faithfulness to the covenant. Israel is not intrinsically better than anyone. What is special about Israel is rather that it has been given a singular opportunity to follow a path that will ultimately bring blessing to all the families of the earth.
9:5. take possession. Forms of this term occur more than sixty times in Deuteronomy. Here it is linked specifically to the promise to the patriarchs. This brings back to mind Abraham’s exchange with YHWH just before their covenant, where this word occurs three times. Abraham says that he is childless, so someone else will “take possession” of what is his, but God assures him that his own offspring will “take possession” from him (Gen 15:3–4). The numerous repetitions of the term convey the central importance of the link and continuity between the episodes of the patriarchs’ lives and the fate of their descendants.
6So you shall know that it is not because of your virtue that YHWH, your God, gives you this good land to take possession of it, because you’re a hardnecked people.
9:6. take possession. Forms of this term occur more than sixty times in Deuteronomy. Here it is linked specifically to the promise to the patriarchs. This brings back to mind Abraham’s exchange with YHWH just before their covenant, where this word occurs three times. Abraham says that he is childless, so someone else will “take possession” of what is his, but God assures him that his own offspring will “take possession” from him (Gen 15:3–4). The numerous repetitions of the term convey the central importance of the link and continuity between the episodes of the patriarchs’ lives and the fate of their descendants.
7Remember—don’t forget!—that you made YHWH, your God, angry in the wilderness. From the day that you went out from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you’ve been rebellious toward YHWH.
8And you made YHWH angry at Horeb, and YHWH was so incensed at you as to destroy you.
9When I went up to the mountain to get the tablets of stones, the tablets of the covenant that YHWH made with you, and I stayed in the mountain forty days and forty nights, I didn’t eat bread and didn’t drink water.
9:9. didn’t eat bread and didn’t drink water. This is the first mention of this miracle that Moses personally experiences at Horeb. It is not reported in Exodus. Moses tells the people about it now, in his list of their rebellions, seemingly to convey to them that they rebelled in the golden calf episode precisely while something awesome was going on. While they were saying, “This man Moses, we don’t know what’s become of him,” Moses was in fact experiencing a kind of physical transformation.
Another explanation: The people’s rebellions up to that point (and frequently thereafter) were about food and water: the bitter water at Marah (Exod 22–26), the manna (16:2–36), and the water from the rock (17:1–7). And so Moses conveys to them that their worries and complaints were utterly unnecessary: in God’s hands a man could even live without food or water for forty days. Indeed, this follows Moses’ admonition in the preceding chapter that “a human doesn’t live by bread alone” (Deut 8:3).
10And YHWH gave me the two tablets of stones, written with God’s finger, and on them were all the words that YHWH had spoken with you at the mountain from inside the fire in the day of the assembly.
11And it was: at the end of forty days and forty nights YHWH gave me the two tablets of stones, the tablets of the covenant.
12“And YHWH said to me, ‘Get up. Go down quickly from here, because your people whom you brought out from Egypt has become corrupt. They’ve turned quickly from the way that I commanded them. They’ve made themselves a molten thing.’
13And YHWH said to me, saying, ‘I’ve seen this people; and, here, it’s a hardnecked people.
14Hold back from me, and I’ll destroy them and wipe out their name from under the skies, and I’ll make you into a more powerful and numerous people than they.’
15“And I turned and went down from the mountain—and the mountain was burning in fire—and the two tablets of the covenant were on my two hands.
16And I saw! And, here, you’d sinned against YHWH, your God. You’d made yourselves a molten calf. You’d turned quickly from the way that YHWH had commanded you.
17And I grasped the two tablets and threw them from on my two hands and shattered them before your eyes.
18“And I prostrated myself in front of YHWH like the first time, forty days and forty nights—I didn’t eat bread and didn’t drink water—over all your sin that you did, to do what was bad in YHWH’s eyes, to provoke Him,
19because I was dreading on account of the anger and the fury, that YHWH was so angry at you as to destroy you. But YHWH listened to me that time as well.
20And YHWH was very incensed at Aaron so as to destroy him, and I prayed for Aaron at that time as well.
9:20. incensed at Aaron. The text of the golden calf event (Exodus 32) never says that God was specifically angry at Aaron. We might understand the fact that Moses only makes it known now for the first time as indicating that he would not mention it until after Aaron’s death. Thus he spares Aaron the humiliation. And he has thus deferred any doubts that this might have raised about the status of the high priest until now, when they can be considered in the light of the man’s entire life and career as high priest.
21And your sin that you made, the calf: I took it and burned it in fire and crushed it, grinding it well until it was thin as dust, and I threw its dust into the wadi that comes down from the mountain.
9:21. burned it … thin as dust. The parallels between Aaron’s golden calf and those of Jeroboam I, king of Israel, are unmistakable. Jeroboam erects golden calves at Dan and Beth-El (1 Kings 12:26–30). On that occasion he says, “Here are your gods, Israel, which brought you out from the land of Egypt”—which are the same words that the people say at the golden calf in Exodus. Jeroboam’s sons are Nadab and Abiyah; Aaron’s sons are Nadab and Abihu. And King Josiah destroys the high place where Jeroboam’s golden calf stood at Beth-El, and, like Moses, “he burned it thin as dust” (2 Kings 23:15). Also like Moses, Josiah casts the dust of pagan altars into a wadi (23:6,12). A literary-historical analysis of this parallel appears in my Who Wrote the Bible? (pp. 111–116). In the terms of the full Tanak as it now stands, the parallel would suggest that history repeats itself. This is also one of many parallels between Josiah and Moses that serve to single out Josiah as the best of the kings of Israel, the one who comes closest to the standards that Moses taught by commandment and example. Thus the Torah says at the end of Moses’ life: “And a prophet did not rise again in Israel like Moses” (Deut 34:10); and the Tanak says at the end of Josiah’s life: “And after him one did not rise like him” (2 Kings 23:25)—and these are the only two occurrences of the expression “did not rise like him” in the Bible. Again the embroidery of connections through the Tanak is apparent.
22“And at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth Hattaavah you were making YHWH angry.
23And when YHWH sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go up and take possession of the land that I’ve given you,’ then you rebelled at the word of YHWH, your God, and you didn’t trust Him and didn’t listen to His voice.
24You’ve been rebelling toward YHWH from the day I knew you.
25“So I prostrated myself in front of YHWH for the forty days and forty nights that I had fallen down because YHWH had said He would destroy you,
26and I prayed to YHWH and said, ‘My Lord YHWH, don’t destroy your people and your legacy whom you redeemed by your greatness, whom you brought out from Egypt with a strong hand.
9:26. destroy. The word in Hebrew, ta
t, has the same root meaning as the word for what the people have done: become corrupt, hiît (9:12). The same play on this root is used in the flood story (Gen 6:12–13). There and here it is not just wordplay for its own sake. It conveys the principle that punishment is meant to be in proportion to the crime. The repetition of the pun here in Deuteronomy conveys that what was true for all humankind in the early generations of creation is still true in relations between God and humans in the Torah’s final book.
27Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Don’t look to this people’s hardness and to its wickedness and to its sin,
28or else the land from which you brought us out will say: Because YHWH wasn’t able to bring them to the land of which He spoke to them, and because He hated them, He brought them out to kill them in the wilderness!
29And they’re your people and your legacy, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.’
