Deuteronomy 7:7

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.

Deuteronomy 7:7 Meaning and Commentary

Deuteronomy 7:7

The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you
He had done both, and the one as the effect and evidence of the other; he loved them, and therefore he chose them; but neither of them,

because ye were more in number than any people;
not for the quantity of them, nor even for the quality of them:

for ye were the fewest of all people;
fewer than the Egyptians, from whence they came, and than the Canaanites they were going to drive out and inherit their land, ( Deuteronomy 7:1 ) . Those whom God has loved with an everlasting love, and as a fruit of it has chosen them in Christ before the world began to grace and glory, holiness and happiness, are but a small number, a little flock; though many are called, few are chosen; nor are they better than others, being by nature children of wrath even as others, and as to their outward circumstances the poor of this world.

Deuteronomy 7:7 In-Context

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,