God’s People
7 The Lord your God will bring you into the land. You are entering that land to own it. As you go in, he will force out these nations: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. These seven nations are stronger than you. 2 The Lord your God will hand these nations over to you. You will defeat them. You must destroy them completely. Do not make a peace treaty with them. Do not show them any mercy. 3 Do not marry any of them. Don’t let your daughters marry their sons. And don’t let your sons marry their daughters. 4 Those people will turn your children away from me. Your children will begin serving other gods. The Lord will be very angry with you. And he will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you must do to those people: Tear down their altars. Smash their holy stone pillars. Cut down their Asherah idols and burn their idols in the fire. 6 You are holy people. You belong to the Lord your God. He has chosen you from all the people on earth. You are his very own.
7 The Lord did not care for you and choose you because there were many of you. You are the smallest nation of all. 8 But the Lord chose you because he loved you. And he kept his promise to your ancestors. So he brought you out of Egypt by his great power. He brought you back from the land of slavery. He bought you back from the power of the king of Egypt. 9 So know that the Lord your God is God. He is the faithful God. He will keep his agreement of love for a thousand lifetimes. He does this for people who love him and obey his commands. 10 But he will pay back those people who hate him. He will destroy them. And he will not be slow to pay back those who hate him. 11 So be careful to obey the commands, rules and laws I give you today.
12 Pay attention to these laws. Obey them carefully. Then the Lord your God will keep his agreement and show his love to you. He promised your ancestors he would. 13 He will love and bless you. He will make the number of your people grow. He will bless you with children. He will bless your fields with good crops. He will give you grain, new wine and oil. He will bless your cows with calves and your sheep with lambs. This is the way it will be in the land he promised your ancestors he would give you. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people. Every husband and wife will have children. All your cattle will have calves. 15 The Lord will take away all disease from you. You will not have the terrible diseases that were in Egypt. But he will give them to your enemies. 16 You must destroy all the people the Lord your God hands over to you. Do not feel sorry for them. Do not worship their gods. They will trap you.
17 You might say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. We can’t force them out.” 18 But don’t be afraid of them. Remember what the Lord your God did to all of Egypt and its king. 19 You saw for yourselves the troubles, signs and miracles he did. You saw how the Lord’s great power and strength brought you out of Egypt. The Lord your God will do the same thing to all the nations you now fear. 20 The Lord your God will also send hornets to attack them. Even those who are alive and hiding from you will die. 21 Don’t be afraid of them. The Lord your God is with you. He is a great God and people are afraid of him. 22 The Lord your God will force those nations out of the land. They will leave little by little ahead of you. Don’t destroy them all at once. Otherwise, the wild animals will grow too many in number. 23 But the Lord your God will hand those nations over to you. He will confuse them until they are destroyed. 24 The Lord will help you defeat their kings. The world will forget who they were. No one will be able to stop you. You will destroy them all. 25 Burn up their idols in the fire. Do not wish for the silver and gold on them. Don’t take it for yourselves, or you will be trapped by it. The Lord your God hates it. 26 Do not bring one of those hated things into your house. If you do, you will be completely destroyed along with it. Hate and reject those things. They must be completely destroyed.