How is it possible for me by myself to be responsible for you, and undertake the weight of all your troubles and your arguments?

And in the waste land, where you have seen how the Lord was supporting you, as a man does his son, in all your journeying till you came to this place.

If you say in your hearts, These nations are greater in number than we are: how are we to take their land from them?

Keep well in mind how you made the Lord your God angry in the waste land; from the day when you went out of Egypt till you came to this place, you have gone against the orders of the Lord.

And what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and their war-carriages; how he made the waters of the Red Sea come up over them when they went after you, and how the Lord put an end to them even to this day;

After their destruction take care that you do not go in their ways, and that you do not give thought to their gods, saying, How did these nations give worship to their gods? I will do as they did.

This is how it is to be done: every creditor is to give up his right to whatever he has let his neighbour have; he is not to make his neighbour, his countryman, give it back; because a general forgiveness has been ordered by the Lord.

And if you say in your hearts, How are we to be certain that the word does not come from the Lord?

How, meeting you on the way, he made an attack on you when you were tired and without strength, cutting off all the feeble ones at the end of your line; and the fear of God was not in him.

(For you have in mind how we were living in the land of Egypt; and how we came through all the nations which were on your way;

For I have knowledge of your hard and uncontrolled hearts: even now, while I am still living, you will not be ruled by the Lord; how much less after my death?

How would it be possible for one to overcome a thousand, and two to send ten thousand in flight, if their rock had not let them go, if the Lord had not given them up?