Driving other peoples from Canaan
7
📚When the LORD your God has brought you into the land where you are going to possess it, and has driven out many nations before you, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 7:1 These nations were not small tribes living in the forest. They were a strong and numerous people, more powerful and with a more highly developed civilization than Israel.⚜
2 📚and when the LORD your God has delivered them up to you, you must strike them down and completely destroy them. You must make no covenant with them, or show mercy to them.
3 📚And you must not intermarry with them. You must not give your daughter to his son, or take his daughter for your son. 4 📚For they will turn your son away from following me, so that they will serve other gods; and the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and suddenly destroy you.
7:4 This is the worst possible thing that could happen to Israel. See notes on God’s anger at Num 25:3; Ps 90:7-11.⚜
5 📚But this is how you must deal with them: you must destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their sacred groves 📖, and burn their idols with fire.
6 📚For you are a holy people for the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a special people for himself, above all people who are on the face of the earth.
Why God chose Israel
7 📚The LORD did not set his love on you, or choose you, because you were more in number than any people, for you were the fewest of all people. 8 📚But because the LORD loved you and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slaves, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
7:8 He loved them, not because they were good or wise or numerous or strong, or because they had great love for him (actually none of these things was true of them), but simply because He loved them (Jer 31:3).⚜
9 📚Therefore know that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God, who, to a thousand generations, keeps covenant and mercy with those who love him and keep his commandments, 10 📚and repays those who hate him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slow concerning the one who hates him; he will repay him to his face.
11 📚Therefore you shall keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I command you this day to do them.
Blessings for obedience
12 📚So it will come about, if you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep the covenant and the mercy toward you which he swore to your fathers; 13 📚and he will love you, and bless you, and increase your numbers. He will also bless the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your land, your grain, and your wine, and your oil, the increase of your cattle, and your flocks of sheep, in the land which he swore to your fathers to give you. 14 📚You shall be blessed above all people. No male or female among you, or among your livestock, will be barren. 15 📚And the LORD will take away all sickness from you, and will not put on you any of the malignant diseases of Egypt, which you know, but will put them on all those who hate you.
God would enable them to conquer Canaan
16 📚And you must destroy all the people whom the LORD your God hands over to you. Your eye must not pity them. And you must not serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
17 📚If you say in your heart, “These nations are more numerous than I; how can I drive them out?”, 18 📚you must not be afraid of them, but must well remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh, and to all Egypt, 19 📚the great trials which your eyes saw, and the signs and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm, with which the LORD your God brought you out. In the same way the LORD your God will do to all the people of whom you are afraid.
7:17-19 See v 1. Their confidence was not to be in themselves but in God alone.⚜
20 📚The LORD your God will also send the hornet among them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you, are destroyed. 21 📚You must not be afraid of them, for the LORD your God is among you 📖, a mighty and awesome 📖 God.
22 📚And the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little. You will not be permitted to destroy them all at once, so that the beasts of the field do not increase against you. 23 📚But the LORD your God will hand them over to you, and throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. 24 📚And he will deliver their kings into your hand, and you will destroy their name from under heaven. No man will be able to stand before you, until you have destroyed them. 25 📚You must burn the idols of their gods in the fire. You must not desire the silver or gold that is on them, or take it for yourselves, so that you are not snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. 26 📚And you must not bring an abomination into your house, so you will not become a cursed thing like it; but you must utterly detest it and utterly abhor it; for it is an accursed thing.
7:25-26 See v 5. Anything connected with idolatry is an abomination to the one true God.⚜