Julia Evelina Smith Parker (1876)

1Hear, Israel: Thou passest this day over Jordan to go to possess nations great and strong above thee; cities great and fortified to the heavens: 2A people great and high, sons of Anakims, whom thou knewest, and thou heardest, Who shall stand before the sons of Anak? 3And know thou this day that Jehovah thy God he is passing over before thee; he is a consuming fire, he will destroy them, and he will humble them before thy face, and drive them out and destroy them quickly, as Jehovah spake to thee. 4Thou shalt not say in thy heart in Jehovah thy God's thrusting them out from before thee, saying, For my justice Jehovah brought me forth to possess this land; and for the injustice of these nations Jehovah dispossessed them from before thee. 5Not for thy justice and for the straightness of thy heart thou goest in to possess this land, but for the injustice of these nations Jehovah thy God dispossesses them from before thee, and order to lift up the word which he sware to thy fathers, to Abraham and to Isaak and to Jacob.  6And know thou that not for thy justice did Jehovah thy God five to thee this good land to possess it; for thou a people of a hard neck. 7Remembering, thou shalt not forget that thou didst provoke Jehovah thy God to anger in the desert: from the day thou didst go out from the land of Egypt till your coming to this place, ye were rebelling against Jehovah. 8And in Horeb ye provoked Jehovah to anger, and Jehovah will be angry with you to destroy you. 9In my going up to the mount to take the tables of stone, the tables of the covenant which Jehovah made with you, and I shall dwell in the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate not bread and I drank not water: 10And Jehovah will give to me two tables of stone written with the finger of God; and upon them according to all the words which Jehovah spake with you in the mountain out of the midst of the fire, in the day of the gathering. 11And it shall be from the end of forty days and forty nights, Jehovah gave to me the two tables of stone, the tables of the covenant. 12And Jehovah will say to me, Arise, go from this mountain; for thy people were corrupted which thou broughtest forth from Egypt; they turned aside quickly from the way which thou didst command them; they made to themselves a molten thing. 13And Jehovah will say to me, saying, I saw this people, and behold, it a people of hard neck: 14Desist from me and I will destroy them, and I will wipe off their name from under the heavens: and I will make thee into a nation strong and many above them. 15to And I shall turn and come down from the mount, and the mount burnt with fire: and the two tables of the covenant upon my two hands. 16And I shall see, and behold, ye sinned against Jehovah your God; ye made to you a molten calf; ye turned aside quickly from the way which Jehovah commanded you. 17And I shall lay hold upon the two tables and I shall cast them from out of my two hands, and shall break them before your eyes. 18And I shall fall down before Jehovah as at the first; forty days and forty nights I ate not bread and I drank not water on account of all your sins that ye sinned to do evil in the eyes of Jehovah to provoke him 19For I was afraid from the face of the anger and emotion with which Jehovah was angry against you to destroy you. And Jehovah will hear to me also in this time. 20And with Aaron Jehovah was greatly angry to destroy him: and I shall pray also for Aaron in that time. 21And the sin that ye made, the calf, I took and I shall burn it with fire, and beat it, and grinding small till it was beat small to dust: and I shall cast its dust into the torrent going down from the mount. 22And in Taberah and in Massah, and in Kibroth Hatavah, ye were provoking Jehovah to anger. 23And in Jehovah's sending you from Kadesh-Barnea, saying; Go ye up and possess the land which I gave to you: and ye will rebel against the mouth of Jehovah your God, and ye trusted not to him, and ye heard not to his voice. 24And ye were rebelling against Jehovah from the day I knew you. 25And I shall fall down before Jehovah forty days and forty nights, as I fell down; for Jehovah said to destroy you. 26And I shall pray to Jehovah, and say, Lord Jehovah, thou wilt not destroy thy people and thine inheritance which thou didst redeem in thy greatness, whom thou broughtest out of Egypt with a strong hand. 27Remember thy servants, for Abraham, for Isaak, and for Jacob, thou wilt not look to the stubbornness of this people, and to its wickedness, and to its sin: 28Lest they of the land where thou broughtest us from there shall say, For Jehovah was not able to bring them in to the land which he spake to them; and for his hating them he brought them out to destroy them in the desert 29And they are thy people and thine inheritance whom thou broughtest out by thy great strength and by thine extended arm.


Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary
 1   MOSES DISSUADES THEM FROM THE OPINION OF THEIR OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS. (Deu. 9:1-25)
this day--means this time. The Israelites had reached the confines of the promised land, but were obliged, to their great mortification, to return. But now they certainly were to enter it. No obstacle could prevent their possession; neither the fortified defenses of the towns, nor the resistance of the gigantic inhabitants of whom they had received from the spies so formidable a description.
cities great and fenced up to heaven--Oriental cities generally cover a much greater space than those in Europe; for the houses often stand apart with gardens and fields intervening. They are almost all surrounded with walls built of burnt or sun-dried bricks, about forty feet in height. All classes in the East, but especially the nomad tribes, in their ignorance of engineering and artillery, would have abandoned in despair the idea of an assault on a walled town, which to-day would be demolished in a few hours.

 4   Speak not thou in thine heart, . . . saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land--Moses takes special care to guard his countrymen against the vanity of supposing that their own merits had procured them the distinguished privilege. The Canaanites were a hopelessly corrupt race, and deserved extermination; but history relates many remarkable instances in which God punished corrupt and guilty nations by the instrumentality of other people as bad as themselves. It was not for the sake of the Israelites, but for His own sake, for the promise made to their pious ancestors, and in furtherance of high and comprehensive purposes of good to the world, that God was about to give them a grant of Canaan.

 7   Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the Lord--To dislodge from their minds any presumptuous idea of their own righteousness, Moses rehearses their acts of disobedience and rebellion committed so frequently, and in circumstances of the most awful and impressive solemnity, that they had forfeited all claims to the favor of God. The candor and boldness with which he gave, and the patient submission with which the people bore, his recital of charges so discreditable to their national character, has often been appealed to as among the many evidences of the truth of this history.

 8   Also in Horeb--rather, "even in Horeb," where it might have been expected they would have acted otherwise.

 12   Arise, get thee down quickly from hence; for thy people . . . have corrupted themselves--With a view to humble them effectually, Moses proceeds to particularize some of the most atrocious instances of their infidelity. He begins with the impiety of the golden calf--an impiety which, while their miraculous emancipation from Egypt, the most stupendous displays of the Divine Majesty that were exhibited on the adjoining mount, and the recent ratification of the covenant by which they engaged to act as the people of God, were fresh in memory, indicated a degree of inconstancy or debasement almost incredible.

 17   I took the two tables, . . . and broke them before your eyes--not in the heat of intemperate passion, but in righteous indignation, from zeal to vindicate the unsullied honor of God, and by the suggestion of His Spirit to intimate that the covenant had been broken, and the people excluded from the divine favor.

 18   I fell down before the Lord--The sudden and painful reaction which this scene of pagan revelry produced on the mind of the pious and patriotic leader can be more easily imagined than described. Great and public sins call for seasons of extraordinary humiliation, and in his deep affliction for the awful apostasy, he seems to have held a miraculous fast as long as before.

 20   The Lord was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him--By allowing himself to be overborne by the tide of popular clamor, Aaron became a partaker in the guilt of idolatry and would have suffered the penalty of his sinful compliance, had not the earnest intercession of Moses on his behalf prevailed.

 21   I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount--that is, "the smitten rock" (El Leja) which was probably contiguous to, or a part of, Sinai. It is too seldom borne in mind that though the Israelites were supplied with water from this rock when they were stationed at Rephidim (Wady Feiran), there is nothing in the Scripture narrative which should lead us to suppose that the rock was in the immediate neighborhood of that place (see on Exod 17:5). The water on this smitten rock was probably the brook that descended from the mount. The water may have flowed at the distance of many miles from the rock, as the winter torrents do now through the wadies of Arabia-Petrća (Ps 78:15-Ps 78:16). And the rock may have been smitten at such a height, and at a spot bearing such a relation to the Sinaitic valleys, as to furnish in this way supplies of water to the Israelites during the journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir and Kadesh-barnea (Deut 1:1-Deut 1:2). On this supposition new light is, perhaps, cast on the figurative language of the apostle, when he speaks of "the rock following" the Israelites (1Cor 10:4) [WILSON, Land of the Bible].

 25   Thus I fell down before the Lord forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first--After the enumeration of various acts of rebellion, he had mentioned the outbreak at Kadesh-barnea, which, on a superficial reading of this verse, would seem to have led Moses to a third and protracted season of humiliation. But on a comparison of this passage with Num 14:5, the subject and language of this prayer show that only the second act of intercession (Deut 9:18) is now described in fuller detail.