Deuteronomy 7:5-15

5 But thus shall ye do to them; ye shall destroy their altars, and shall break down their pillars, and shall cut down their groves, and shall burn with fire the graven images of their gods.

6 For thou art a holy people to the Lord thy God; and the Lord thy God chose thee to be to him a peculiar people beyond all nations that upon the face of the earth.

7 It was not because ye are more numerous than all nations that the Lord preferred you, and the Lord made choice of you: for ye are fewer in number than all nations.

8 But because the Lord loved you, and as keeping the oath which he sware to your fathers, the Lord brought you out with a strong hand, and the Lord redeemed thee from the house of bondage, out of the hand of Pharao king of Egypt.

9 Thou shalt know therefore, that the Lord thy God, he God, a faithful God, who keeps covenant and mercy for them that love him, and for those that keep his commandments to a thousand generations,

10 and who recompenses them that hate him to their face, to destroy them utterly; and will not be slack with them that hate him: he will recompense them to their face.

11 Thou shalt keep therefore the commands, and the ordinances, and these judgments, which I command thee this day to do.

12 And it shall come to pass when ye shall have heard these ordinances, and shall have kept and done them, that the Lord thy God shall keep for thee the covenant and the mercy, which he sware to your fathers.

13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee; and he will bless the off-spring of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the herds of thine oxen, and the flocks of thy sheep, on the land which the Lord sware to thy fathers to give to thee.

14 Thou shalt be blessed beyond all nations; there shall not be among you an impotent or barren one, or among thy cattle.

15 And the Lord thy God shall remove from thee all sickness; and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou hast seen, and all that thou hast known, will he lay upon thee; but he will lay them upon all that hate thee.

Deuteronomy 7:5-15 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.

Footnotes

• [a]. belly.
• [b]. and.