With the beginning of a new section, Moses may need to be reintroduced as the speaker.

Then I lay prostrate: Moses does at the foot of the mountain what he had done on top of it (verse 9).

Before the LORD: this is to indicate that what Moses was doing was a religious act. It could be that he lay down in front of the Covenant Tent for the forty days. Good News Translation has “in the LORD’s presence” and Contemporary English Version has “at the place of worship.” Verse 20 indicates that Moses prayed to Yahweh while lying prostrate before him. This may be included in the translation here; for example, “… at the place of worship and prayed to him [Yahweh] for you [plural].”

As before: see verse 9.

I neither ate bread nor drank water: see verse 9.

Doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD: see 4.25.

To provoke him to anger: see verse 7. The text does not mean they did this in order to provoke God, but that by doing this they did in fact provoke God.

Some restructuring will be needed in the last part of this verse. Good News Translation offers a good model:

• “I did this because you had sinned against the LORD and made him angry.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .