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MARCH 24
The people whom God enlisted to record His revelation did not shed their personalities, edu-
cation, or style as they wrote for God. Moses had the equivalent of advanced degrees in the best
training Egypt had to offer young princes (Acts 7:22). If we think of the Pentateuch as Moses’ God-
guided journaling during the wilderness wanderings,it will not seem unusual that his writing style
bears similarities to the official and political writings of his day. What sets Moses’ writings, along
with the rest of Scripture, apart is not so much the style but their authoritative and God-inspired
content.

you. It is not because of your righteousness
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MARCH 24 or the uprightness of your heart that you go in
to possess their land, but because of the
wickedness of these nations that the LORD
your God drives them out from before you,
Deuteronomy 9:1–10:22
and that He may fulfill the word which the
“Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham,
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9 Jordan today, and go in to dispossess Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore understand that
nations greater and mightier than yourself, the LORD your God is not giving you this good
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cities great and fortified up to heaven, a peo- land to possess because of your righteous-
ple great and tall, the descendants of the ness, for you are a stiff-necked people.
Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you 7 “Remember! Do not forget how you pro-
heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the voked the LORD your God to wrath in the
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descendants of Anak?’ Therefore understand wilderness. From the day that you departed
today that the LORD your God is He who goes from the land of Egypt until you came to this
over before you as a consuming fire. He will place, you have been rebellious against the
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destroy them and bring them down before LORD. Also in Horeb you provoked the LORD
you; so you shall drive them out and destroy to wrath, so that the LORD was angry enough
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them quickly, as the LORD has said to you. with you to have destroyed you. When I went
4 up into the mountain to receive the tablets of
“Do not think in your heart, after the LORD
your God has cast them out before you, say- stone, the tablets of the covenant which the
ing, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD LORD made with you, then I stayed on the
has brought me in to possess this land’; but it mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither
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is because of the wickedness of these nations ate bread nor drank water. Then the LORD
that the LORD is driving them out from before delivered to me two tablets of stone written
with the finger of God, and on them were all
the words which the LORD had spoken to you
on the mountain from the midst of the fire in
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the day of the assembly. And it came to pass,
9:3 a consuming fire. The Lord was pictured at the end of forty days and forty nights, that
as a fire which burned everything in its path. the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the
So the Lord would go over into Canaan and tablets of the covenant.
12 “Then the LORD said to me, ‘Arise, go
exterminate Canaanites.destroy them quick-
ly. Israel was to be the human agent of the down quickly from here, for your people
Lord’s destruction of the Canaanites.The mili- whom you brought out of Egypt have acted
tary strength of the Canaanites would be corruptly; they have quickly turned aside
destroyed quickly (Josh. 6:1–11:23), though from the way which I commanded them; they
the complete subjugation of the land would have made themselves a molded image.’
take time (7:22; Josh. 13:1). 13 “Furthermore the LORD spoke to me, say-
ing, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed they
9:4 Because of my righteousness. Three are a stiff-necked people. Let Me alone, that I
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times in vv. 4–6, Moses emphasized that the may destroy them and blot out their name
victory was not because of Israel’s goodness, from under heaven; and I will make of you a
but was entirely the work of God. It was the nation mightier and greater than they.’
wickedness of the Canaanites that led to their 15 “So I turned and came down from the
expulsion from the land (see Rom. 10:6).
mountain, and the mountain burned with fire;
and the two tablets of the covenant were in my
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