Deuteronomy 7:1-7

1 When the Lord your God takes you into the land where you are going, which is to be your heritage, and has sent out the nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you;

2 And when the Lord has given them up into your hands and you have overcome them, give them up to complete destruction: make no agreement with them, and have no mercy on them:

3 Do not take wives or husbands from among them; do not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons.

4 For through them your sons will be turned from me to the worship of other gods: and the Lord will be moved to wrath against you and send destruction on you quickly.

5 But this is what you are to do to them: their altars are to be pulled down and their pillars broken, and their holy trees cut down and their images burned with fire.

6 For you are a holy people to the Lord your God: marked out by the Lord your God to be his special people out of all the nations on the face of the earth.

7 The Lord did not give you his love or take you for himself because you were more in number than any other people; for you were the smallest of the nations:

Deuteronomy 7:1-7 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.