Deuteronomy 7

Warnings

1 "1When the LORD your God brings you into the land where * you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before * you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, 2seven nations greater and stronger than you,
2 and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, 3then you shall utterly destroy them. 4You shall make no covenant with them 5and show no favor to them.
3 "Furthermore, 6you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons.
4 "For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and 7He will quickly destroy you.
5 "But thus you shall do to them: 8you shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire.
6 "For you are 9a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be 10a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
7 "11The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples,
8 but because the LORD loved you and kept the 12oath which He swore to your forefathers, 13the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 "Know therefore that the LORD your God, 14He is God, 15the faithful God, 16who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who 17love Him and keep His commandments;
10 but 18repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face.
11 "Therefore, you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them.

Promises of God

12 "19Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you His covenant and His lovingkindness which He swore to your forefathers.
13 "He will 20love you and bless you and 21multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you.
14 "You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no male or female 22barren among you or among your cattle.
15 "23The LORD will remove from you all sickness; and He will not put on you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will lay them on all who hate you.
16 "You shall consume all the peoples whom the LORD your God will deliver to you; 24your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be 25a snare to you.
17 "If you should say in your heart, 'These nations are greater than I; how can I 26dispossess them?'
18 you shall not be afraid of them; you shall well 27remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt:
19 28the great trials which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders and the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the LORD your God brought you out. So shall the LORD your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.
20 "Moreover, the LORD your God will send 29the hornet against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish.
21 "You shall not dread them, for 30the LORD your God is in your midst, 31a great and awesome God.
22 "32The LORD your God will clear away these nations before * you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for the wild beasts would grow too numerous for you.
23 "33But the LORD your God will deliver them before you, and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed.
24 "34He will deliver their kings into your hand so that you will make their name perish from under heaven; 35no man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them.
25 "The graven images of their gods you are to 36burn with fire; you shall 37not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be 38snared by it, for it is an 39abomination to the LORD your God.
26 "You shall not bring an abomination into your house, and like it come under the 40ban; you shall utterly detest it and you shall utterly abhor it, for it is something banned.

Deuteronomy 7 Commentary

Chapter 7

Intercourse with the Canaanites forbidden. (1-11) Promises if they were obedient. (12-26)

Verses 1-11 Here is a strict caution against all friendship and fellowship with idols and idolaters. Those who are in communion with God, must have no communication with the unfruitful works of darkness. Limiting the orders to destroy, to the nations here mentioned, plainly shows that after ages were not to draw this into a precedent. A proper understanding of the evil of sin, and of the mystery of a crucified Saviour, will enable us to perceive the justice of God in all his punishments, temporal and eternal. We must deal decidedly with our lusts that war against our souls; let us not show them any mercy, but mortify, and crucify, and utterly destroy them. Thousands in the world that now is, have been undone by ungodly marriages; for there is more likelihood that the good will be perverted, than that the bad will be converted. Those who, in choosing yoke-fellows, keep not within the bounds of a profession of religion, cannot promise themselves helps meet for them.

Verses 12-26 We are in danger of having fellowship with the works of darkness if we take pleasure in fellowship with those who do such works. Whatever brings us into a snare, brings us under a curse. Let us be constant to our duty, and we cannot question the constancy of God's mercy. Diseases are God's servants; they go where he sends them, and do what he bids them. It is therefore good for the health of our bodies, thoroughly to mortify the sin of our souls; which is our rule of duty. Yet sin is never totally destroyed in this world; and it actually prevails in us much more than it would do, if we were watchful and diligent. In all this the Lord acts according to the counsel of his own will; but that counsel being hid from us, forms no excuse for our sloth and negligence, of which it is in no degree the cause. We must not think, that because the deliverance of the church, and the destruction of the enemies of the soul, are not done immediately, therefore they will never be done. God will do his own work in his own method and time; and we may be sure that they are always the best. Thus corruption is driven out of the hearts of believers by little and little. The work of sanctification is carried on gradually; but at length there will be a complete victory. Pride, security, and other sins that are common effects of prosperity, are enemies more dangerous than beasts of the field, and more apt to increase upon us.

Cross References 40

  • 1. Deuteronomy 20:16-18
  • 2. Acts 13:19
  • 3. Numbers 31:17; Joshua 11:11
  • 4. Exodus 23:32
  • 5. Deuteronomy 7:16; Deuteronomy 13:8
  • 6. Exodus 34:15, 16; Joshua 23:12; Ezra 9:2
  • 7. Deuteronomy 4:26
  • 8. Exodus 23:24; Exodus 34:13; Deuteronomy 12:3
  • 9. Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 14:2, 21; Psalms 50:5; Jeremiah 2:3
  • 10. Exodus 19:5; Deuteronomy 4:20; Deuteronomy 14:2; Deuteronomy 26:18; Psalms 135:4; Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 2:9
  • 11. Deuteronomy 4:37
  • 12. Exodus 32:13
  • 13. Exodus 13:3
  • 14. Deuteronomy 4:35, 39
  • 15. Isaiah 49:7; 1 Corinthians 1:9; 1 Thessalonians 5:24; 2 Timothy 2:13
  • 16. Exodus 20:6; Daniel 9:4
  • 17. Deuteronomy 5:10
  • 18. Isaiah 59:18; Nahum 1:2
  • 19. Leviticus 26:3-13; Deuteronomy 28:1-14
  • 20. Psalms 146:8; Proverbs 15:9; John 14:21
  • 21. Leviticus 26:9; Deuteronomy 13:17; Deuteronomy 30:5
  • 22. Exodus 23:26
  • 23. Exodus 15:26
  • 24. Deuteronomy 7:2
  • 25. Exodus 23:33; Judges 8:27; Psalms 106:36
  • 26. Numbers 33:53
  • 27. Psalms 105:5
  • 28. Deuteronomy 4:34
  • 29. Exodus 23:28; Joshua 24:12
  • 30. Exodus 29:45; Joshua 3:10
  • 31. Deuteronomy 10:17; Nehemiah 1:5; Nehemiah 9:32
  • 32. Exodus 23:29, 30
  • 33. Exodus 23:27; Joshua 10:10
  • 34. Joshua 6:2; Joshua 10:23-25
  • 35. Deuteronomy 11:25; Joshua 1:5; Joshua 10:8; Joshua 23:9
  • 36. Exodus 32:20; Deuteronomy 12:3; 1 Chronicles 14:12
  • 37. Exodus 20:17
  • 38. Deuteronomy 7:16; Judges 8:27
  • 39. Deuteronomy 17:1
  • 40. Leviticus 27:28

Footnotes 24

Chapter Summary

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.

Deuteronomy 7 Commentaries

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