Open English Translation DEU Chapter 7

7 When your god Yahweh brings you into the land which you’re going to possess, he’ll drive out many people groups ahead of you: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and the Yevusites—seven societies that are more powerful than yourselves.[ref] 2 When your god Yahweh enables you to defeat them, you must kill them all. You must make no agreement with them, and you must not act mercifully toward them. 3 Don’t intermarry with them: don’t allow your daughters to marry their sons, or your sons to marry any of their daughters 4 because they’d turn your sons away from me, and they’d end up serving other gods. Then Yahweh would become very angry with you all and would quickly destroy you. 5 What you all should do to those people is to break down their altars and smash their stone pillars, cut their Asherah poles to pieces, and burn up their idols.[ref] 6 You must do that because you’re a group of people who belong only to your god Yahweh. He’s chosen you from all the people groups in the world to be his own special people.[ref]

7 Yahweh loved you and chose you all, not because you were the most populous nation (in fact, you were the smallest of all the nations), 8 but because Yahweh loves you all and because he kept the promise that he’d made to your ancestors. Yahweh used his power to rescue you all from the slavery imposed by Egypt’s King Far-oh. 9 So remember that your god Yahweh is God—the faithful god who keeps agreements and displays loyal commitment toward a thousand generations of those who love him and obey what he’s commanded.[ref] 10 However, to those who hate him, he won’t hesitate to pay them back with punishment and destruction. 11 So be sure to obey all the instructions, rules, and regulations that I’m giving you today.

12 If you pay attention to these instructions and always obey them, then your god Yahweh will keep the agreement that he promised to your ancestors and continue to display his loyal commitment to you,[ref] 13 and he will love you and bless you. He’ll grant you many children and make your farming productive, producing grain and grapes for wine, and olive oil. Your cattle and sheep and goats will multiply on the land that he promised your ancestors that he’d give you. 14 You’ll be blessed more than any other people group. All of you will be able to have children, and all of your livestock will produce offspring. 15 Yahweh will keep sickness away from you. All those horrible diseases that your ancestors saw in Egypt won’t affect you, but instead he’ll give them to those who hate you. 16 You must destroy all the peoples that your god Yahweh gives you victory over—don’t allow yourselves to pity them, and don’t serve their gods because that would end up trapping you.

17 Don’t tell yourselves that because those groups have many more people than you, that you won’t be able to drive them out. 18 You mustn’t be afraid of them, but rather you should think back to what your god Yahweh did to Far-oh and to all Egypt. 19 Remember the terrible plagues that you saw, and the powerful miracles that your god Yahweh used to bring you out. That’s what he’ll do to the people groups that you’re still afraid of now. 20 What’s more, after that your god Yahweh will send hornets against any who are left or in hiding, until they’re all destroyed. 21 Don’t be afraid of those people, because your god Yahweh will be with you. He’s a powerful god that people are in awe of. 22 He’ll drive those people groups out bit by bit—don’t try to destroy them all at once or else the wild animals would multiply up and cause problems. 23 Your god Yahweh will enable you to defeat those people groups and cause them to panic until they are destroyed. 24 He’ll enable you to defeat their kings and their names will be forgotten from history. No one will be able to stand against you until you finally destroy them. 25 You must burn their idols in a fire—don’t be tempted to take any gold or silver decorations off them in case you get trapped by it, because your god Yahweh hates every part of those idols. 26 Don’t take any of those disgusting idols into your homes or you too might become a target for destruction. You should hate and detest them because they’re destined for destruction.