“When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are
entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations
before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the
Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven
nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the LORD your
God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must
devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant
with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with
them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters
for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following
me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be
kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But thus
shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and
dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn
their carved images with fire.
“For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your
God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out
of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not
because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD
set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all
peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the
oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you
out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the
LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and
steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments,
to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate
him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates
him. He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful
to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command
you today.
“And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the
LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast
love that he swore to your fathers. He will love you, bless you,
and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the
fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the
increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land
that he swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed
above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among
you or among your livestock. And the LORD will take away from you
all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you
knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate
you. And you shall consume all the peoples that the LORD your God
will give over to you. Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall
you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
“If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I. How
can I dispossess them?’ you shall not be afraid of them but you
shall remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all
Egypt, the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders,
the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which the LORD your
God brought you out. So will the LORD your God do to all the
peoples of whom you are afraid. Moreover, the LORD your God will
send hornets among them, until those who are left and hide
themselves from you are destroyed. You shall not be in dread of
them, for the LORD your God is in your midst, a great and awesome
God. The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you
little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the
wild beasts grow too numerous for you. But the LORD your God will
give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until
they are destroyed. And he will give their kings into your hand,
and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one
shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them.
The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall
not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for
yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to
the LORD your God. And you shall not bring an abominable thing into
your house and become devoted to destruction like it. You shall
utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction.
