rsv Deuteronomy:1:11-35 SEEK
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May the LORD ,
the God of your fathers ,
make you a thousand times as many as you are ,
and bless you ,
as he has promised you !
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How can I bear alone the weight and burden of you and your strife ?
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Choose wise ,
understanding ,
and experienced men ,
according to your tribes ,
and I will appoint them as your heads .'
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And you answered me , `
The thing that you have spoken is good for us to do .'
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So I took the heads of your tribes ,
wise and experienced men ,
and set them as heads over you ,
commanders of thousands ,
commanders of hundreds ,
commanders of fifties ,
commanders of tens ,
and officers ,
throughout your tribes .
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And I charged your judges at that time , `
Hear the cases between your brethren ,
and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien that is with him .
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You shall not be partial in judgment ;
you shall hear the small and the great alike ;
you shall not be afraid of the face of man ,
for the judgment is God '
s ;
and the case that is too hard for you ,
you shall bring to me ,
and I will hear it .'
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And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do .
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And we set out from Horeb ,
and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw ,
on the way to the hill country of the Amorites ,
as the LORD our God commanded us ;
and we came to Ka '
desh-bar '
nea .
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And I said to you , `
You have come to the hill country of the Amorites ,
which the LORD our God gives us .
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Behold ,
the LORD your God has set the land before you ;
go up ,
take possession ,
as the LORD ,
the God of your fathers ,
has told you ;
do not fear or be dismayed .'
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Then all of you came near me ,
and said , `
Let us send men before us ,
that they may explore the land for us ,
and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities into which we shall come .'
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The thing seemed good to me ,
and I took twelve men of you ,
one man for each tribe ;
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and they turned and went up into the hill country ,
and came to the Valley of Eshcol and spied it out .
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And they took in their hands some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us ,
and brought us word again ,
and said , `
It is a good land which the LORD our God gives us .'
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Yet you would not go up ,
but rebelled against the command of the LORD your God ;
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and you murmured in your tents ,
and said , `
Because the LORD hated us he has brought us forth out of the land of Egypt ,
to give us into the hand of the Amorites ,
to destroy us .
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Whither are we going up ?
Our brethren have made our hearts melt ,
saying , "
The people are greater and taller than we ;
the cities are great and fortified up to heaven ;
and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there ."'
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Then I said to you , `
Do not be in dread or afraid of them .
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The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you ,
just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes ,
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and in the wilderness ,
where you have seen how the LORD your God bore you ,
as a man bears his son ,
in all the way that you went until you came to this place .'
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Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the LORD your God ,
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who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents ,
in fire by night ,
to show you by what way you should go ,
and in the cloud by day .
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And the LORD heard your words ,
and was angered ,
and he swore ,
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Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land which I swore to give to your fathers ,