Deuteronomy 7

³The Lord your God Himself will cross over ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you will dispossess them. Joshua will cross ahead of you, as the Lord has said.

¹⁹And having vanquished seven nations in Canaan, He gave their land to His people as an inheritance.

³⁸to drive out before you nations greater and mightier than you, and to bring you into their land and give it to you for your inheritance, as it is this day.

¹⁸On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land—from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates—

¹⁹the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites,

²And I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

¹When you go out to war against your enemies and see horses, chariots, and an army larger than yours, do not be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, is with you.

²and you are not to make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall tear down their altars.’ Yet you have not obeyed My voice. What is this you have done?

³²You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods.

³³They must not remain in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

¹⁶However, in the cities of the nations that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not leave alive anything that breathes.

¹⁷For you must devote them to complete destruction—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you,

¹⁴“Our lives for your lives!” the men agreed. “If you do not report our mission, we will show you kindness and faithfulness when the Lord gives us the land.”

²⁸Nothing that a man sets apart to the Lord from all he owns—whether a man, an animal, or his inherited land—can be sold or redeemed; everything so devoted is most holy to the Lord.

²⁹No person set apart for destruction may be ransomed; he must surely be put to death.

¹⁴For the Lord your God walks throughout your camp to protect you and deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, lest He see anything unclean among you and turn away from you.

²These women were from the nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, for surely they will turn your hearts after their gods.” Yet Solomon clung to these women in love.

¹²For if you turn away and cling to the rest of these nations that remain among you, and if you intermarry and associate with them,

¹³know for sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become for you a snare and a trap, a scourge in your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land that the Lord your God has given you.

¹⁵Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices.

¹⁶And when you take some of their daughters as brides for your sons, their daughters will prostitute themselves to their gods and cause your sons to do the same.

²³In those days I also saw Jews who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

²⁴Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or of the other peoples, but could not speak the language of Judah.

⁶And they took the daughters of these people in marriage, gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

⁷So the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

¹⁴Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

¹⁵What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

¹⁵For the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God. Otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth.

¹⁶They provoked His jealousy with foreign gods; they enraged Him with abominations.

¹⁷They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear.

⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

²⁶I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live long upon it, but will be utterly destroyed.

⁷So the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

⁸Then the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim king of Aram-naharaim, and the Israelites served him eight years.

²⁰So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed the covenant I laid down for their fathers and has not heeded My voice,

²⁴You must not bow down to their gods or serve them or follow their practices. Instead, you are to demolish them and smash their sacred stones to pieces.

¹³Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles.

²Destroy completely all the places where the nations you are dispossessing have served their gods—atop the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree.

³Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn up their Asherah poles, cut down the idols of their gods, and wipe out their names from every place.

²¹And I took that sinful thing, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust, and I cast it into the stream that came down from the mountain.

²²and do not set up for yourselves a sacred pillar, which the Lord your God hates.

²⁵You must burn up the images of their gods; do not covet the silver and gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it; for it is detestable to the Lord your God.

²for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord has chosen you to be a people for His prized possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.

⁵Now if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasured possession out of all the nations—for the whole earth is Mine.

⁶And unto Me you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you are to speak to the Israelites.”

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

¹⁷“They will be Mine,” says the Lord of Hosts, “on the day when I prepare My treasured possession. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.

¹⁹Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

²⁰you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.

¹⁹that He will set you high in praise and name and honor above all the nations He has made, and that you will be a holy people to the Lord your God, as He has promised.

²²Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.

¹¹Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God’s plan of election might stand,

¹²not by works but by Him who calls, she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”

¹⁰And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

²¹Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?

¹Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name be the glory, because of Your loving devotion, because of Your faithfulness.

¹⁸Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden.

²“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

³The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with loving devotion.

¹³Remember Your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom You swore by Your very self when You declared, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give your descendants all this land that I have promised, and it shall be their inheritance forever.’”

⁴But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,

⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!

¹⁵Yet the Lord has set His affection on your fathers and loved them. And He has chosen you, their descendants after them, above all the peoples, even to this day.

⁴Because you are precious and honored in My sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you and nations in place of your life.

²³Let us hold resolutely to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.

¹³if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.

³But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.

⁴And I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed, “O, Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of loving devotion to those who love Him and keep His commandments,

⁹God, who has called you into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

⁵Then I said: “O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps His covenant of loving devotion with those who love Him and keep His commandments,

¹⁸So He will repay according to their deeds: fury to His enemies, retribution to His foes, and recompense to the islands.

²The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and full of wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on His foes and reserves wrath for His enemies.

¹⁹Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written: “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord.”

³⁵Vengeance is Mine; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; for their day of disaster is near, and their doom is coming quickly.”

⁸Your hand will apprehend all Your enemies; Your right hand will seize those who hate You.

⁹You will place them in a fiery furnace at the time of Your appearing. In His wrath the Lord will engulf them, and the fire will consume them.

³¹If the righteous receive their due on earth, how much more the ungodly and the sinner!

¹⁵If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

¹Hear now, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to follow, so that you may live and may enter and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.

³²So be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you are not to turn aside to the right or to the left.

⁹Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps His covenant of loving devotion for a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments.

¹“Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

²And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the Lord your God:

³If you follow My statutes and carefully keep My commandments,

⁴I will give you rains in their season, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit.

⁸He remembers His covenant forever, the word He ordained for a thousand generations—

⁹the covenant He made with Abraham, and the oath He swore to Isaac.

⁷²to show mercy to our fathers and to remember His holy covenant,

⁷³the oath He swore to our father Abraham, to grant us

²⁰You will show faithfulness to Jacob and loving devotion to Abraham, as You swore to our fathers from the days of old.

²¹Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.”

³You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

⁴The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

¹⁰If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love.

²⁵So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take away sickness from among you.

²⁷For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God.

²²The blessing of the Lord enriches, and He adds no sorrow to it.

²⁶No woman in your land will miscarry or be barren; I will fulfill the number of your days.

²⁷I will send My terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn and run.

⁴The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

¹¹The Lord will make you prosper abundantly—in the fruit of your womb, the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your land—in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.

³Children are indeed a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward.

⁹I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will establish My covenant with you.

²⁹Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is the shield that protects you, the sword in which you boast. Your enemies will cower before you, and you shall trample their high places.”

²⁶saying, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.”

³⁶Then He struck all the firstborn in their land, the firstfruits of all their vigor.

³⁷He brought Israel out with silver and gold, and none among His tribes stumbled.

³If you follow My statutes and carefully keep My commandments,

⁴I will give you rains in their season, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit.

⁶⁰He will afflict you again with all the diseases you dreaded in Egypt, and they will cling to you.

²⁷The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors and scabs and itch from which you cannot be cured.

¹¹The magicians could not stand before Moses, because the boils had broken out on them and on all the Egyptians.

³³They must not remain in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

²⁷From all this Gideon made an ephod, which he placed in Ophrah, his hometown. But soon all Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his household.

¹³You must show him no pity. You are to purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood, that it may go well with you.

²and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you to defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.

⁸you must not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity, and do not spare him or shield him.

²¹You must show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, and foot for foot.

⁵³You are to take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess.

³²So they gave the Israelites a bad report about the land that they had spied out: “The land we explored devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw there are great in stature.

⁴⁷But Jesus, knowing the thoughts of their hearts, had a little child stand beside Him.

²¹Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has begotten these for me? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. So who has reared them? Look, I was left all alone, so where did they come from?’”

¹⁶“The hill country is not enough for us,” they replied, “and all the Canaanites who live in the valley have iron chariots, both in Beth-shean with its towns and in the Valley of Jezreel.”

¹⁷So Joshua said to the house of Joseph—to Ephraim and Manasseh—“You have many people and great strength. You shall not have just one allotment,

²¹You may ask in your heart, “How can we recognize a message that the Lord has not spoken?”

⁵Remember the wonders He has done, His marvels, and the judgments He has pronounced,

⁶Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or terrified of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.”

²⁹So I said to you: “Do not be terrified or afraid of them!

¹¹I will remember the works of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your wonders of old.

⁹Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Wake up as in days past, as in generations of old. Was it not You who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced through the dragon?

¹⁰Was it not You who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea for the redeemed to cross over?

⁶We devoted them to destruction, as we had done to Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city.

³⁴Or has any god tried to take as his own a nation out of another nation—by trials, signs, wonders, and war, by a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors—as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt, before your eyes?

¹⁰You performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, all his officials, and all the people of his land, for You knew they had acted with arrogance against our fathers. You made a name for Yourself that endures to this day.

¹¹You divided the sea before them, and they crossed through it on dry ground. You hurled their pursuers into the depths like a stone into raging waters.

²⁰You performed signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and You do so to this very day, both in Israel and among all mankind. And You have made a name for Yourself, as is the case to this day.

²¹You brought Your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great terror.

¹⁰He continued, “This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that He will surely drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites.

³You saw with your own eyes the great trials, and those miraculous signs and wonders.

⁶On that day I swore to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands.

⁷And I said to them: ‘Each of you must throw away the abominations before his eyes, and you must not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.’

¹²I sent the hornet ahead of you, and it drove out the two Amorite kings before you, but not by your own sword or bow.

²⁸I will send the hornet before you to drive the Hivites and Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.

²⁹I will not drive them out before you in a single year; otherwise the land would become desolate and wild animals would multiply against you.

¹⁷For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and accepting no bribe.

⁵Then I said: “O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps His covenant of loving devotion with those who love Him and keep His commandments,

³²So now, our God, the great and mighty and awesome God who keeps His gracious covenant, do not view lightly all the hardship that has come upon us, and upon our kings and leaders, our priests and prophets, our ancestors and all Your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until today.

¹⁰He continued, “This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that He will surely drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites.

¹⁴After I had made an inspection, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.”

⁹Huddle together, O peoples, and be shattered; pay attention, all you distant lands; prepare for battle, and be shattered; prepare for battle, and be shattered!

¹⁰Devise a plan, but it will be thwarted; state a proposal, but it will not happen. For God is with us.”

²⁹I will not drive them out before you in a single year; otherwise the land would become desolate and wild animals would multiply against you.

³⁰Little by little I will drive them out ahead of you, until you become fruitful and possess the land.

⁶³But the descendants of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites living in Jerusalem. So to this day the Jebusites live there among the descendants of Judah.

⁹They will suffer the penalty of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might,

¹⁵Indeed, the Lord’s hand was against them, to eliminate them from the camp, until they had all perished.

¹⁵Alas for the day! For the Day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

⁶Wail, for the Day of the Lord is near; it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

³But understand that today the Lord your God goes across ahead of you as a consuming fire; He will destroy them and subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them swiftly, as the Lord has promised you.

¹⁸Let my persecutors be put to shame, but do not let me be put to shame. Let them be terrified, but do not let me be terrified. Bring upon them the day of disaster and shatter them with double destruction.

⁹The Lord has driven out great and powerful nations before you, and to this day no one can stand against you.

⁸The Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them, for I have delivered them into your hand. Not one of them shall stand against you.”

⁵No one shall stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so will I be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.

⁴²And because the Lord, the God of Israel, fought for Israel, Joshua captured all these kings and their land in one campaign.

¹⁴Leave Me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. Then I will make you into a nation mightier and greater than they are.”

²⁵No man will be able to stand against you; the Lord your God will put the fear and dread of you upon all the land, wherever you set foot, as He has promised you.

²⁰Then he took the calf they had made, burned it in the fire, ground it to powder, and scattered the powder over the face of the water. Then he forced the Israelites to drink it.

¹²There the Philistines abandoned their gods, and David ordered that they be burned in the fire.

¹You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or a sheep with any defect or serious flaw, for that is detestable to the Lord your God.

²¹When I saw among the spoils a beautiful cloak from Shinar, two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”

³Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn up their Asherah poles, cut down the idols of their gods, and wipe out their names from every place.

⁵Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire.

¹⁷Nothing devoted to destruction shall cling to your hands, so that the Lord will turn from His fierce anger, grant you mercy, show you compassion, and multiply you as He swore to your fathers,

⁸O Ephraim, what have I to do anymore with idols? It is I who answer and watch over him. I am like a flourishing cypress; your fruit comes from Me.

²²So you will desecrate your silver-plated idols and your gold-plated images. You will throw them away like menstrual cloths, saying to them, “Be gone!”

¹⁸When they return to it, they will remove all its detestable things and all its abominations.

²²You who forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?

¹⁷Now the city and everything in it must be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all those with her in her house will live, because she hid the spies we sent.

¹⁸But keep away from the things devoted to destruction, lest you yourself be set apart for destruction. If you take any of these, you will set apart the camp of Israel for destruction and bring disaster upon it.