Themes: Israel’s inheritance of the Promise Land is because of the wickedness of the inhabitors of the land not because of the righteousness of the Israelites.
Verses 1-3: Israel is going into the Promised Land to dispossess the people living there; the people are ‘greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven’; however, the Lord your God is going before you and He will destroy and subdue them so you, Israel, can defeat them.
Verses 4-5: The Lord God is not driving out the existing peoples because Israel is righteous but because the existing peoples are wicked and the Lord is keeping His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Verses 6-21: Moses, to prove his point, reminds Israel when they were stubborn and unrighteous: at Horeb when Moses received the Ten Commandments and they, Israel, built the Golden Calf.
Verses 22-24: Moses says slso at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah and Kadesh-barnea they were rebellious. Moses says, “You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you”.
Verses 25-29: Moses tells Israel he prayed to the Lord to spare them by calling upon the Lord to remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and to remind Him that Israel was His inheritance that He brought out of Egypt with His outstretched arm.
Views from an Evangelist 