Deuteronomy 7:1-6

The LORD Will Drive Many Nations Out

1 The LORD your God will bring you into the land. You are going to enter it and take it as your own. He'll drive many nations out to make room for you. He'll drive out the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Those seven nations are larger and stronger than you are.
2 The LORD your God will hand them over to you. You will win the battle over them. You must completely destroy them. Don't make a peace treaty with them. Don't show them any mercy.
3 Don't get married to any of them. Don't give your daughters to their sons. And don't take their daughters for your sons.
4 If you do, those people will turn your children away from following the LORD. Then your children will serve other gods. The LORD's anger will burn against you. It will quickly destroy you.
5 So here is what you must do to those people. Break down their altars. Smash their sacred stones. Cut down the poles they use to worship the goddess Asherah. Burn the statues of their gods in the fire.
6 You are a holy nation. The LORD your God has set you apart for himself. He has chosen you to be his special treasure. He chose you out of all of the nations on the face of the earth to be his people.

Deuteronomy 7:1-6 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO DEUTERONOMY 7

In this chapter the Israelites are exhorted to destroy the seven nations of the land of Canaan, when they entered into it, and to make no alliances with them of any kind, nor suffer any remains of idolatry to continue, De 7:1-5 to observe which, and other commands of God, they are urged from the consideration of their being freely chosen of God above all other people, and of their being redeemed out of the house of bondage, and of the Lord's being a covenant keeping God to them, De 7:6-11 and it is promised them, for their further encouragement to keep the commands of God, that they should have an increase of all temporal good things, and no evils and calamities should come upon them, De 6:12-16, and, lest they should be disheartened at the numbers and might of their enemies, they are put in mind of what God had done for them in Egypt, and of what he had promised to do for them now, De 7:17-20 and they are assured that the nations should be cast out before them by little and little, until they were utterly destroyed, De 7:21-24 and the chapter is concluded with an exhortation to destroy their images, and not admit anything of that sort to be brought into their houses, De 7:25,26.

Holy Bible, New International Reader's Version® Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1998 by Biblica.   All rights reserved worldwide.