(Deuteronomy (9:1 -10:11)
"Listen, O Israel: today you will be crossing the River Jordan to conquer nations stronger and more populous than you, great cities with fortifications that reach to the sky, and people who are giants, descendants of Anak, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, 'Who can stand up against the Anakites?' Rest assured that Jehovah your god will go before you like a consuming fire to destroy them. He will subdue them so that you will be able to expel and annihilate them quickly, as Jehovah has promised you would.
"After Jehovah your god has expelled these people in advance of your entering the land, don't be thinking, 'Jehovah has brought us in to take over this land because of our righteousness.' No, it is because of the wickedness of other peoples that Jehovah is driving them out before you. It is not because of your righteous actions or upright character that are you are going to take possession of their land, but because of these nations' wickedness that Jehovah will drive them out before you and fulfill the promise he made to your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
"Therefore, keep in mind that Jehovah is not giving you this good land to occupy because you are righteous, for you are not: you're a willful people. Remember and never forget how in the desert you aroused the ire of Jehovah your god. From the time you left Egypt until this day, you have been rebellious against Jehovah. Even at Horeb you made Jehovah angry, in fact he was so incensed he would have destroyed you. This occurred when I was on the mountain receiving the stone tablets, inscribed with the terms of the pact Jehovah had made with you. I was there on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights; I ate no food and drank no water. Jehovah presented me with two stone tablets inscribed by the hand of God. On them were written all the words that Jehovah had spoken to you from out of the fire on the day of the assembly.
"At the end of the 40 days and 40 nights Jehovah gave me the two stone tablets that were the record of the pact. But Jehovah then told me, ‘Leave here at once and go back down, for the people you brought out of Egypt are corrupting themselves. They have quickly deserted the path I commanded them to follow. They’ve made for themselves an idol cast of metal!’ And he also confided to me, 'I have seen these people and they’re surely a pigheaded lot. Leave me alone so that I can exterminate them and erase their name from the memory of man. Then I will make from your descendants a nation that will be far stronger and larger than they are.'
"While it was blazing with fire, I left and came down the mountain, holding in my own two hands the two tablets inscribed with the terms of the pact. When I looked down I could see that you had sinned against Jehovah. You had cast an metal idol in the shape of a calf. How quickly had you deserted the path that Jehovah had commanded you to follow! So I took the two tablets and hurled them down, smashing them to bits before your eyes.
"Then, once again, I prostrated myself before Jehovah for another 40 days and 40 nights, neither eating food nor drinking water, because of the sin you had committed, doing what was wrong in Jehovah's eyes and arousing his anger. I was afraid of the ire and the outrage of Jehovah against you, for he seemed irate enough to destroy you. But again Jehovah listened to me. And Jehovah was angry enough to destroy Aaron, but at the same time I prayed for him, too. I took what you had made in sin, the calf, and burned it. I crushed it and pulverized it into powder as fine as dust and dumped it into a stream that flowed down the mountain.
"And you aroused Jehovah's ire at Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth Hattaavah. At Kadesh Barnea Jehovah sent you out, telling you, 'Go up and occupy the land I have given you.’ But you defied the authority of Jehovah your god. You wouldn't trust him or heed his commands. Indeed, you've been defiant of Jehovah for as long as I've known you.
"That is why I prostrated myself before Jehovah for 40 days and 40 nights, because Jehovah had said he would destroy you. I prayed to Jehovah and pleaded with him, ‘O my god Jehovah, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance that you saved and brought out of Egypt with your might and power. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Please excuse the defiance of these people, their wickedness and sin, lest the country from which they were freed will declare, "Because Jehovah was incapable of bringing them into the land he had promised them, and because he hates them, he led them into the desert in order to put them to death.” But remember they are your people and your inheritance that you freed with your might and power.'
"At that time Jehovah told me, 'Cut two tablets of stone just like the first ones and make a chest of wood for them. Then come up to me on the mountain. I will inscribe on the tablets the same writing that were on the first set that you broke. You may then place them in the wooden chest.' And so I made a chest of acacia wood, cut two tablets just like the first set, and went up on the mountain with the tablets in my hands. Jehovah wrote on the tablets in the same words as before, the Ten Commandments that Jehovah spoke to you from out of the fire on that day when you were assembled at the foot of the mountain. And Jehovah gave them to me. Then I left, came down from the mountain, and put the tablets into the chest I had made, as Jehovah had commanded me. And there they remain."
(The Israelites journeyed from the wells of Bene Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died and was buried and was succeeded as high priest by his son Eleazar. From there they journeyed to Gudgodah, then to Jotbathah, a land of many streams. At that time Jehovah designated the tribe of Levi to carry the Jehovah's Chest of Sacred Records, to minister and worship before Jehovah's altar, and pronounce blessings in his name, as they do now. This is why the Levites have no share of the property or land given to the other tribes of Israel. Jehovah himself remains their particular inheritance, as Jehovah their god told them.)
"I myself remained on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, as I did the first time. And, as before, Jehovah listened to me and agreed not to destroy you. Then Jehovah said to me, "Get up and resume your journey and lead the people to the land I promised to give to their ancestors so they can enter and take possession of it."
Notes
1. Moses and the biblical authors are frustratingly non-specific about how Jehovah will aid the Israelites militarily. It is made to seem that, with Jehovah's help, the Israelites will able to totally conquer the Promised Land in a week or two, and yet it is also made clear that the expulsion and/or extermination of the native inhabitants will take place over a considerable period of time. The vagueness and the contradictions do not lend credibility to any claim that the invasion and occupation is historical; indeed, few historians believe that it is.
2. Moses goes up on the mountain and is without food and water for 40 days, on two occasions. Why was it necessary and how was it possible? Was he nourished in some other way? Or did, when he visited Jehovah, enter into another dimension during which a short period of time elapsed for Moses, but a long period (40 days) elapsed for the Israelites. (Such temporal discrepancies are common with those today who encounter or are abducted by supposed extraterrestrials and were also noted in the past by those who claimed to have visited fairyland.) Since no man can live for 40 days without water (twice!), the other alternative is that Moses, the Moses presented in the Bible, is an egregious liar.
3. Moses does not make too much of his prolonged fasting, although he blames the Israelites for having to do it twice. He makes no mention of the hardship it must have been for a man reportedly 80 years old to hike up and down a mountain so many times. He does not say how he wiled away his 40 days, although he seems to suggest that he spent it prostrated before Jehovah, who did not seem to tire of Moses' company.
4. Moses makes a pair of Ten Commandment stone tablets that are apparently identical to those made by Jehovah. (Considering their importance, why didn't Jehovah provide the hot-tempered Moses with an unbreakable set?) One would have thought that a god could have made superior tablets, but perhaps Moses was really good with his hands. How large, though, might the tablets have been to contain the full text of the Ten Commandments? Would they have been light enough for this old man to carry? And, the question asked many times before, how were they written, since the earliest Hebrew and the first alphabets were hundreds of years in the future? Did Jehovah write in Egyptian hieroglyphics, in the language of his enemy? The implausibilities and improbabilities, the historical inaccuracies and anachronisms must lead any reasonable person to come to the inevitable conclusion that the Ten Commandment story is not factual, but either a highly embellished yarn or a mere fairy tale.
5. There are several discrepancies between the story told here by Moses and that set down in Exodus, although the accounts are not substantially different. Here Moses fails to mention Joshua, who waited for Moses when he came down from the mountain and called his attention to racket made by the Golden Calf-adoring Israelites, thinking it was the clamor of war. In Exodus Moses inscribes the second set of tablets himself, but here Jehovah does the inscribing himself. A major contradiction involves the chest made for the Ten Commandment tablets. Here Moses makes a simple wooden box for them before he even receives the second set. (A handy man is the Moses of Deuteronomy.) In Exodus they are housed in the Chest of Sacred Records (Ark of the Covenant), elaborately crafted, lined with gold, with a lid adorned with the gold statues of winged figures and rings fitted for carrying staves. (Interesting that Moses was able to carry the tablets himself, while, once they were in the chest, it took at least four men to do so.) Here Moses brags about how he repeatedly spares the Israelites from Jehovah's destructive wrath, but conveniently fails to mention the indiscriminate slaughter he ordered after the Golden Calf incident. --- It should be mentioned that most scholars believe that Deuteronomy, or a draft of it, may have been written as early as the 10th Century BC, well before Exodus, which was probably composed in the 6th Century BC, after the Babylonian Captivity. Deuteronomy, therefore, may be presumed to be the more authentic account, but of what -- historical fact or sacred legend?
6. Jehovah excuses his championing of the people of Israel by saying they are not good at all, but merely less evil than the rest of the nations. And, rubbing it in, Moses reminds them of Jehovah’s intention to wipe them out and create a better nation out of Moses’ descendants. (How long would that have taken?) In the end he convinces Jehovah to spare the Israelites with the irresistible argument, “What would the Egyptians think?” Hearing all this must have been a great morale booster for the Israelites! Jehovah's jaundiced view of the character of his Chosen People may have been justified, but his own character, bordering on demonic and sociopathic, hardly qualified him as a judge of goodness.
7. As has been pointed out before, Moses speaks to his audience as if they had all participated in the Exodus from the beginning and had experienced the events he speaks of. All the men who had left Egypt, save Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, were now dead. None remaining can bear any personal responsibility for the instances of defiance and disobedience that Moses cites. Yet, he rails against them, when he should be addressing the dead. These sermons by Moses have the tinge of senior moment reminiscences.
8. At Taberah the Israelites became restive and Jehovah responded by burning those at the outskirts of the camp. At Massah the Israelites expressed their discontent over not having any water to drink. At Kibroth Hattaavah the Israelites griped about having to eat manna and lusted after some real meat. Jehovah then sent them a gazillion quails that caused a plague that killed many. Kadesh Barnea was the place from which Moses sent out scouts into the Promised Land. Distorted accounts made by most of the scouts caused the Israelites to balk at mounting the invasion of the Promised Land Jehovah demanded.
9. In what seem to be the author’s notes, it is stated that Aaron died and was buried at Moserah. In Numbers it is recorded that Aaron died on Mount Hor. The accounts are incompatible, for there is a great deal of distance between the two locations. One would think the Bible authors would get their stories straight, or that someone in 2500 years might have succumbed to the temptation of altering the text to make the narrative consistent.
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