Text -- Deuteronomy 9:1-21 (NET)

Theological Justification of the Conquest

9:1 Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you who live in large cities with extremely high fortifications. 9:2 They include the Anakites, a numerous and tall people whom you know about and of whom it is said, “Who is able to resist the Anakites?” 9:3 Understand today that the Lord your God who goes before you is a devouring fire; he will defeat and subdue them before you. You will dispossess and destroy them quickly just as he has told you. 9:4 Do not think to yourself after the Lord your God has driven them out before you, “Because of my own righteousness the Lord has brought me here to possess this land.” It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out ahead of you. 9:5 It is not because of your righteousness, or even your inner uprightness, that you have come here to possess their land. Instead, because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out ahead of you in order to confirm the promise he made on oath to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 9:6 Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn people!

The History of Israel’s Stubbornness

9:7 Remember– don’t ever forget– how you provoked the Lord your God in the desert; from the time you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place you were constantly rebelling against him. 9:8 At Horeb you provoked him and he was angry enough with you to destroy you. 9:9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained there forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing. 9:10 The Lord gave me the two stone tablets, written by the very finger of God, and on them was everything he said to you at the mountain from the midst of the fire at the time of that assembly. 9:11 Now at the end of the forty days and nights the Lord presented me with the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. 9:12 And he said to me, “Get up, go down at once from here because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have sinned! They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a cast metal image.” 9:13 Moreover, he said to me, “I have taken note of these people; they are a stubborn lot! 9:14 Stand aside and I will destroy them, obliterating their very name from memory, and I will make you into a stronger and more numerous nation than they are.” 9:15 So I turned and went down the mountain while it was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. 9:16 When I looked, you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God and had cast for yourselves a metal calf; you had quickly turned aside from the way he had commanded you! 9:17 I grabbed the two tablets, threw them down, and shattered them before your very eyes. 9:18 Then I again fell down before the Lord for forty days and nights; I ate and drank nothing because of all the sin you had committed, doing such evil before the Lord as to enrage him. 9:19 For I was terrified at the Lord’s intense anger that threatened to destroy you. But he listened to me this time as well. 9:20 The Lord was also angry enough at Aaron to kill him, but at that time I prayed for him too. 9:21 As for your sinful thing that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Deu 9:1

¹ tn Heb “fortified to the heavens” (so NRSV); NLT “cities with walls that reach to the sky.” This is hyperbole.

NET Notes: Deu 9:2

¹ sn Anakites. See note on this term in Deut 1:28.

² tn Heb “great and tall.” Many English versions understand this to refer to physical size or strength rather than numbers (cf. “strong,” NIV, NCV, NRSV, NLT).

NET Notes: Deu 9:3

¹ tn Heb “the Lord.” The pronoun has been used in the translation in keeping with contemporary English style to avoid redundancy.

NET Notes: Deu 9:5

¹ tn Heb “uprightness of your heart” (so NASB, NRSV). The Hebrew word צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah, “righteousness”), though essentially synonymous here with יֹשֶׁר (yosher, “uprightness”), carries the idea of conformity to an objective standard. The term יֹשֶׁר has more to do with an inner, moral quality (cf. NAB, NIV “integrity”). Neither, however, was grounds for the Lord’s favor. As he states in both vv. 4-5, the main reason he allowed Israel to take this land was the sinfulness of the Canaanites who lived there (cf. Gen 15:16).

² tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 9:3.

³ tn Heb “fathers.”

NET Notes: Deu 9:6

¹ tn Heb “stiff-necked” (so KJV, NAB, NIV).

sn The Hebrew word translated stubborn means “stiff-necked.” The image is that of a draft animal that is unsubmissive to the rein or yoke and refuses to bend its neck to draw the load. This is an apt description of OT Israel (Exod 32:9; 33:3, 5; 34:9; Deut 9:13).

NET Notes: Deu 9:7

¹ tn By juxtaposing the positive זְכֹר (zekhor, “remember”) with the negative אַל־תִּשְׁכַּח (’al-tishÿkakh, “do not forget”), Moses makes a most emphatic plea.

² tn Heb “the Lord” (likewise in the following verse with both “him” and “he”). See note on “he” in 9:3.

NET Notes: Deu 9:9

¹ tn Heb “in the mountain.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.

NET Notes: Deu 9:10

¹ sn The very finger of God. This is a double figure of speech (1) in which God is ascribed human features (anthropomorphism) and (2) in which a part stands for the whole (synecdoche). That is, God, as Spirit, has no literal finger nor, if he had, would he write with his finger. Rather, the sense is that God himself – not Moses in any way – was responsible for the composition of the Ten Commandments (cf. Exod 31:18; 32:16; 34:1).

² tn Heb “according to all the words.”

³ tn Heb “the Lord” (likewise at the beginning of vv. 12, 13). See note on “he” in 9:3.

NET Notes: Deu 9:12

¹ tc Heb “a casting.” The MT reads מַסֵּכָה (massekhah, “a cast thing”) but some mss and Smr add עֵגֶל (’egel, “calf”), “a molten calf” or the like (Exod 32:8). Perhaps Moses here omits reference to the calf out of contempt for it.

NET Notes: Deu 9:13

¹ tn Heb “stiff-necked.” See note on the word “stubborn” in 9:6.

NET Notes: Deu 9:14

¹ tn Heb “leave me alone.”

² tn Heb “from under heaven.”

NET Notes: Deu 9:15

¹ tn Heb “the mountain.” The translation uses a pronoun for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

NET Notes: Deu 9:16

¹ tn On the phrase “metal calf,” see note on the term “metal image” in v. 12.

² tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 9:3.

NET Notes: Deu 9:17

¹ tn The Hebrew text includes “from upon my two hands,” but as this seems somewhat obvious and redundant, it has been left untranslated for stylistic reasons.

NET Notes: Deu 9:19

¹ tn Heb “the anger and the wrath.” Although many English versions translate as two terms, this construction is a hendiadys which serves to intensify the emotion (cf. NAB, TEV “fierce anger”).

² tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 9:3.

NET Notes: Deu 9:20

¹ tn Heb “Aaron.” The pronoun is used in the translation to avoid redundancy.

NET Notes: Deu 9:21

¹ tn Heb “your sin.” This is a metonymy in which the effect (sin) stands for the cause (the metal calf).

² tn Heb “burned it with fire.”