Deuteronomy 9

It's the big day! The day the Israelites have been praying for for forty years. That's right, it's time to enter the Promised Land! Hot damn!

But first there's the pesky little problem of the people who already live there. Moses does his best Knute Rockne impersonation to pump up his team.

"Hear, O Israel, thou art to pass over Jordan this day," Moses says, "to go in to posses nations greater and mightier than thyself..."

"Um, coach?" asks an Israelite.

"...cities great and fenced up to heaven. A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, 'Who can stand before the children of Anak!'"

"Um, Moses?"

"Understand therefore this day," Moses says, "that the Lord they God is He which goeth over before thee as a consuming fire he shall destroy them...so shalt he drive them out and destroy them quickly."

"Oh," the Israelite says. "So if God planned on killing everyone himself, why did he make such a big deal about the  Reubenites and Gadites not wanting to cross the River and fight?"

Moses is glad that someone spoke like an idiot; it gives him an excuse to tell everyone the real reason God is gifting them Canaan, and it ain't because the Israelites are sooooo special.

"Not for thy righteousness or for the uprightness of thine heart dost thou go to possess their land," Moses says, "but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee."

Take that you lousy good-for-nothing chosen people! You're only worthy of such primo real estate because the current inhabitants are completely morally debased! Moses then call the Israelites "stiffnecked," which, according to a cursory Google search, means "stubborn" or "unyielding"--not exactly the words I'd use to describe almost a million men, women, and children who have followed a dark cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night and who have eaten nothing but pigeons and sandy sky-bread for forty years.

Gullible. That's the word I'd use. Stupid, too.

To drive home the unworthiness of the Israelites, Moses again reminds everyone of all the terrible ways they have disappointed God over the decades--two words: golden calf--and recounts the begging and pleading and bowing and scraping he had to do to make God forgive everyone.

Man, that Moses is such a drama queen.  

This focus on how rebellious the Israelites have been makes me wonder: why they follow the Lord at all? If they rebel against God at every turn even though He is obviously in their lives, affecting their lives every day, giving them food, protecting them from their enemies, and, even now, about to lead an army and destroy untold number of people just so they can have a decent place to retire, why not just go all the way and either convert to another faith or discard religion altogether? They're more than halfway there already. Really, why do they even bother?