Chapter 7

¹When Yahweh your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, and shall cast out 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; ²and when Yahweh your God shall deliver them up before you, and you shall strike them; then you shall utterly destroy them: you shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them; ³neither shall you make marriages with them; your daughter you shall not give to his son, nor his daughter shall you take to your son. ⁴For he will turn away your son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of Yahweh be kindled against you, and he will destroy you quickly. ⁵But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their engraved images with fire. ⁶For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God: Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth. ⁷Yahweh didn’t set his love on you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples: ⁸but because Yahweh loves you, and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, has Yahweh brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. ⁹Know therefore that Yahweh your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with them who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations, ¹⁰and repays those who hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him who hates him, he will repay him to his face. ¹¹You shall therefore keep the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which I command you this day, to do them. ¹²It shall happen, because you listen to these ordinances, and keep and do them, that Yahweh your God will keep with you the covenant and the loving kindness which he swore to your fathers: ¹³and he will love you, and bless you, and multiply you; he will also bless the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your livestock and the young of your flock, in the land which he swore to your fathers to give you. ¹⁴You shall be blessed above all peoples: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your livestock. ¹⁵Yahweh will take away from you all sickness; and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you know, he will put on you, but will lay them on all those who hate you. ¹⁶You shall consume all the peoples who Yahweh your God shall deliver to you; your eye shall not pity them: neither shall you serve their gods; for that will be a snare to you. ¹⁷If you shall say in your heart, These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them? ¹⁸you shall not be afraid of them: you shall well remember what Yahweh your God did to Pharaoh, and to all Egypt; ¹⁹the great trials which your eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which Yahweh your God brought you out: so shall Yahweh your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ²⁰Moreover Yahweh your God will send the hornet among them, until those who are left, and hide themselves, perish from before you. ²¹You shall not be scared of them; for Yahweh your God is in the midst of you, a great and awesome God. ²²Yahweh your God will cast out those nations before you by little and little: you may not consume them at once, lest the animals of the field increase on you. ²³But Yahweh your God will deliver them up before you, and will confuse them with a great confusion, until they be destroyed. ²⁴He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name to perish from under the sky: there shall no man be able to stand before you, until you have destroyed them. ²⁵The engraved images of their gods shall you burn with fire: you shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it to you, lest you be snared therein; for it is an abomination to Yahweh your God. ²⁶You shall not bring an abomination into your house, and become a devoted thing like it: you shall utterly detest it, and you shall utterly abhor it; for it is a devoted thing.