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.