1The LORD your God will bring you into the land. You are going to enter it and take it as your own. He’ll drive out many nations to make room for you. He’ll drive out the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Those seven nations are larger and stronger than you are.2The LORD your God will hand them over to you. You will win the battle over them. You must completely destroy them. Don’t make a peace treaty with them. Don’t show them any mercy.3Don’t marry any of their people. Don’t give your daughters to their sons. And don’t take their daughters for your sons.4If you do, those people will turn your children away from serving the LORD. Then your children will serve other gods. The LORD will be very angry with you. He will quickly destroy you.5So here is what you must do to those people. Break down their altars. Smash their sacred stones. Cut down the poles they use to worship the female god named Asherah. Burn the statues of their gods in the fire.6You are a holy nation. The LORD your God has set you apart for himself. He has chosen you to be his special treasure. He chose you out of all the nations on the face of the earth to be his people.7The LORD chose you because he loved you very much. He didn’t choose you because you had more people than other nations. In fact, you had the smallest number of all.8The LORD chose you because he loved you. He wanted to keep the promise he had made to your people of long ago. That’s why he used his mighty hand to bring you out of Egypt. He bought you back from the land where you were slaves. He set you free from the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.9So I want you to realise that the LORD your God is God. He is the faithful God. He keeps his covenant for all time to come. He keeps it with those who love him and obey his commandments. He shows them his love.10But he will pay back those who hate him. He’ll destroy them. He’ll quickly pay back those who hate him.11So be careful to obey the commands, rules and laws I’m giving you today.12Pay attention to the laws of the LORD your God. Be careful to obey them. Then he will keep his covenant of love with you. That’s what he promised to your people of long ago.13The LORD will love you and bless you. He’ll cause there to be many of you. He’ll give you many children. He’ll bless the crops of your land. He’ll give you plenty of corn, olive oil and fresh wine. He’ll bless your herds with many calves. He’ll give your flocks many lambs. He’ll do all these things for you in the land of Canaan. It’s the land he promised your people of long ago that he would give you.14He will bless you more than any other nation. All your men and women will have children. All your livestock will have little ones.15The LORD will keep you from getting ill. He won’t send on you any of the horrible diseases you saw all around you in Egypt. But he’ll send them on everyone who hates you.16You must destroy all the nations the LORD your God hands over to you. Don’t feel sorry for them. Don’t serve their gods. If you do, they will be a trap for you.17You might say to yourselves, ‘These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?’18But don’t be afraid of them. Be sure to remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and all the Egyptians.19With your own eyes you saw what the LORD did to them. You saw the signs and amazing things he did. He reached out his mighty hand and powerful arm. The LORD your God used all those things to bring you out. You are now afraid of the nations that are in the land the LORD promised you. But the LORD your God will do to them the same things he did to Egypt.20The LORD your God will also send hornets among those nations. Some of the people left alive will hide from you. But even they will die.21So don’t be terrified by them. The LORD your God is with you. He is a great and wonderful God.22The LORD your God will drive out those nations to make room for you. But he will do it little by little. You won’t be allowed to get rid of them all at once. If you did, wild animals would multiply all around you.23But the LORD your God will hand those nations over to you. He will throw them into a panic until they are destroyed.24He will hand their kings over to you. You will wipe out their names from the earth. No one will be able to stand up against you. You will destroy them.25Burn the statues of their gods in the fire. Don’t wish for the silver and gold on those statues. Don’t take it for yourselves. If you do, it will be a trap for you. The LORD your God hates it.26Don’t bring anything he hates into your house. If you do, you will be completely destroyed along with it. So hate it with all your heart. It is set apart to be destroyed.
Deuteronomy 7
English Standard Version
A Chosen People
1“When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, (Ex 23:23; De 4:38; De 9:1; De 11:23; De 31:3; Ps 44:2)2and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction.[1] You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. (Ex 22:20; Ex 23:32; Ex 34:12; Le 27:29; Nu 21:2; De 7:23; De 20:10; De 20:17; De 23:14; Jos 2:14; Jos 9:18; Jud 1:24; Jud 2:2)3You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, (Ex 34:16; Jos 23:12; 1Ki 11:2; Ezr 9:2)4for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. (De 4:26; De 6:15; De 28:20)5But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire. (Ex 34:13; De 7:25)6“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. (Ex 19:5; Ex 19:6; Ex 22:31; De 14:2; De 26:19; De 28:9; Jer 2:3; Am 3:2; 1Pe 2:9)7It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,8but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Ex 32:13; De 10:15; Ps 105:9; Isa 43:4; Isa 63:9; Jer 31:3; Ho 11:1; Mal 1:2; Lu 1:72)9Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, (Ex 20:6; De 5:10; 2Ch 6:14; Ne 1:5; Ne 9:32; Isa 49:7; Da 9:4; 1Co 1:9; 1Co 10:13; 2Co 1:18; 1Th 5:24; 2Th 3:3; 2Ti 2:13; Heb 10:23; 1Jo 1:9)10and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. (Job 34:11; Isa 59:18; Na 1:2; 2Pe 3:9)11You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today. (De 10:13)12“And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. (Le 26:3; De 28:1; Ps 105:8; Lu 1:55; Lu 1:72)13He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. (De 30:9; Joh 14:21)14You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. (Ex 23:26)15And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. (Ex 9:14; Ex 15:26; De 28:27; De 28:60)16And you shall consume all the peoples that the Lord your God will give over to you. Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you. (Ex 23:33; De 7:2; De 7:25; De 12:30; De 13:8; De 19:13; De 19:21; De 25:12; Jud 8:27)17“If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I. How can I dispossess them?’18you shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, (De 1:29; De 31:6; Ps 77:11; Ps 105:5)19the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out. So will the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. (De 6:22; De 11:3)20Moreover, the Lord your God will send hornets among them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you are destroyed. (Ex 23:28; Jos 24:12)21You shall not be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. (Nu 11:20; Nu 14:14; De 6:15; De 10:17; De 28:58; Jos 3:10; Ne 1:5; Ne 4:14; Ne 9:32)22The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once,[2] lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. (Ex 23:29)23But the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. (De 7:2)24And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. (De 9:14; De 11:25; Jos 1:5; Jos 10:8; Jos 10:24; Jos 10:42; Jos 11:12; Jos 12:1; Jos 23:9)25The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. (Ex 32:20; De 7:5; De 7:16; De 12:3; Jos 7:1; Jos 7:21; 1Ch 14:12)26And you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction[3] like it. You shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction. (Le 27:28; De 13:17; Jos 6:17; Jos 7:1; Mic 4:13)