Warnings

¹“When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to possess, and has cleared away many nations before you, the Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than you, ² and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall not make a covenant (treaty) with them nor show mercy and compassion to them. ³ You shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son; ⁴ for they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled and burn against you and He will quickly destroy you. ⁵ But this is how you shall deal with them: you shall tear down their altars and smash to pieces their sacred pillars, and cut down their Asherim (symbols of the goddess Asherah), and burn their carved or sculpted images in the fire. ⁶ For you are a holy people [set apart] to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people for His own possession [that is, His very special treasure].

⁷ “The Lord did not love you and choose you because you were greater in number than any of the other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ But because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed (bought) you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. ⁹ Therefore know [without any doubt] and understand that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who is keeping His covenant and His [steadfast] lovingkindness to a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; ¹⁰ but repays those who hate Him to their faces, by destroying them; He will not hesitate with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face. ¹¹ Therefore, you shall keep (follow, obey) the commandment and the statutes and judgments (precepts) which I am commanding you today.

Promises of God

¹² “Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the [steadfast] lovingkindness which He swore to your fathers. ¹³ He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your [olive] oil, the offspring of your cattle and the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your fathers to give you. ¹⁴ You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no male or female barren (childless, infertile) among you or among your cattle. ¹⁵ The Lord will take away from you all sickness; and He will not subject you to any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will impose them on all [those] who hate you. ¹⁶ And you shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will give over to you; your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a [deadly] trap to you.

¹⁷ “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I am; how can I dispossess them?’ ¹⁸ you shall not be afraid of them; you shall remember [with confidence] what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt— ¹⁹ the great trials which you saw with your own eyes, and the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. So shall the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ²⁰ Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet (His terror) against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish. ²¹ You shall not dread them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. ²² The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for [if you did] the ^[a]wild animals would become too numerous for you. ²³ But the Lord your God will hand them over to you, and will confuse them with a great panic until they are destroyed. ²⁴ And He will hand over their kings to you, and you will make their name perish from under heaven; no man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ You shall burn the carved and sculpted images of their gods in the fire. You shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, so that you will not be ensnared by it [in a deadly trap], for it is an abomination (repulsive) to the Lord your God. ²⁶ You shall not bring an abomination (idol) into your house, and like it come under the ban (doomed to destruction); you shall utterly detest and you shall utterly hate it, for it is something banned.