Deuteronomy
Chapter 7

1

"When the LORD, your God, brings you into the land which you are to enter and occupy, and dislodges great nations before you--the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites: seven nations more numerous and powerful than you--

2

and when the LORD, your God, delivers them up to you and you defeat them, you shall doom them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.

3

You shall not intermarry with them, neither giving your daughters to their sons nor taking their daughters for your sons.

4

For they would turn your sons from following me to serving other gods, and then the wrath of the LORD would flare up against you and quickly destroy you.

5

¹ "But this is how you must deal with them: Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, chop down their sacred poles, and destroy their idols by fire.

6

For you are a people sacred to the LORD, your God; he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth to be a people peculiarly his own.

7

It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you, for you are really the smallest of all nations.

8

It was because the LORD loved you and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn to your fathers, that he brought you out with his strong hand from the place of slavery, and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

9

Understand, then, that the LORD, your God, is God indeed, the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant down to the thousandth generation toward those who love him and keep his commandments,

10

but who repays with destruction the person who hates him; he does not dally with such a one, but makes him personally pay for it.

11

You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments, the statutes and the decrees which I enjoin on you today.

12

"As your reward for heeding these decrees and observing them carefully, the LORD, your God, will keep with you the merciful covenant which he promised on oath to your fathers.

13

He will love and bless and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the produce of your soil, your grain and wine and oil, the issue of your herds and the young of your flocks, in the land which he swore to your fathers he would give you.

14

You will be blessed above all peoples; no man or woman among you shall be childless nor shall your livestock be barren.

15

The LORD will remove all sickness from you; he will not afflict you with any of the malignant diseases that you know from Egypt, but will leave them with all your enemies.

16

"You shall consume all the nations which the LORD, your God, will deliver up to you. You are not to look on them with pity, lest you be ensnared into serving their gods.

17

Perhaps you will say to yourselves, 'These nations are greater than we. How can we dispossess them?'

18

But do not be afraid of them. Rather, call to mind what the LORD, your God, did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt:

19

the great testings which your own eyes have seen, the signs and wonders, his strong hand and outstretched arm with which the LORD, your God, brought you out. The same also will he do to all the nations of whom you are now afraid.

20

Moreover, the LORD, your God, will send hornets among them, until the survivors who have hidden from you are destroyed.

21

Therefore, do not be terrified by them, for the LORD, your God, who is in your midst, is a great and awesome God.

22

He will dislodge these nations before you little by little. You cannot exterminate them all at once, lest the wild beasts become too numerous for you.

23

The LORD, your God, will deliver them up to you and will rout them utterly until they are annihilated.

24

He will deliver their kings into your hand, that you may make their names perish from under the heavens. No man will be able to stand up against you, till you have put an end to them.

25

The images of their gods you shall destroy by fire. Do not covet the silver or gold on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD, your God.

26

You shall not bring any abominable thing into your house, lest you be doomed with it; loathe and abhor it utterly as a thing that is doomed.

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Footnotes

¹ [5] Sacred pillars . . . poles: see note on Exodus 34:13.

New American Bible Copyright © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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