Deuteronomy 7-8

Complete Jewish Bible

7 (vii) “Adonai your God is going to bring you into the land you will enter in order to take possession of it, and he will expel many nations ahead of you — the Hitti, Girgashi, Emori, Kena‘ani, P’rizi, Hivi and Y’vusi, seven nations bigger and stronger than you. ² When he does this, when Adonai your God hands them over ahead of you, and you defeat them, you are to destroy them completely! Do not make any covenant with them. Show them no mercy. ³ Don’t intermarry with them — don’t give your daughter to his son, and don’t take his daughter for your son. ⁴ For he will turn your children away from following me in order to serve other gods. If this happens, the anger of Adonai will flare up against you, and he will quickly destroy you. ⁵ No, treat them this way: break down their altars, smash their standing-stones to pieces, cut down their sacred poles and burn up their carved images completely. ⁶ For you are a people set apart as holy for Adonai your God. Adonai your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his own unique treasure. ⁷ Adonai didn’t set his heart on you or choose you because you numbered more than any other people — on the contrary, you were the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ Rather, it was because Adonai loved you, and because he wanted to keep the oath which he had sworn to your ancestors, that Adonai brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from a life of slavery under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Maftir) ⁹ From this you can know that Adonai your God is indeed God, the faithful God, who keeps his covenant and extends grace to those who love him and observe his mitzvot, to a thousand generations. ¹⁰ But he repays those who hate him to their face and destroys them. He will not be slow to deal with someone who hates him; he will repay him to his face. ¹¹ Therefore, you are to keep the mitzvot, laws and rulings which I am giving you today, and obey them.

Haftarah Va’etchanan: Yesha‘yahu (Isaiah) 40:1–26

B’rit Hadashah suggested readings for Parashah Va’etchanan: Mattityahu (Matthew) 4:1–11; 22:33–40; Mark 12:28–34; Luke 4:1–13; 10:25–37; Acts 13:13–43; Romans 3:27–31; 1 Timothy 2:4–6; Ya‘akov (James) 2:14–26; and all the readings for Parashah 17

Parashah 46: ‘Ekev (Because) 7:12–11:25

¹² “Because you are listening to these rulings, keeping and obeying them, Adonai your God will keep with you the covenant and mercy that he swore to your ancestors. ¹³ He will love you, bless you and increase your numbers; he will also bless the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground — your grain, wine, olive oil and the young of your cattle and sheep — in the land he swore to your ancestors that he would give you. ¹⁴ You will be blessed more than all other peoples; there will not be a sterile male or female among you, and the same with your livestock. ¹⁵ Adonai will remove all illness from you — he will not afflict you with any of Egypt’s dreadful diseases, which you have known; instead, he will lay them on those who hate you. ¹⁶ You are to devour all the peoples that Adonai your God hands over to you — show them no pity, and do not serve their gods, because that will become a trap for you. ¹⁷ If you think to yourselves, ‘These nations outnumber us; how can we dispossess them?’ ¹⁸ nevertheless, you are not to be afraid of them; you are to remember well what Adonai your God did to Pharaoh and all of Egypt — ¹⁹ the great ordeals which you yourself saw, and the signs, wonders, strong hand and outstretched arm by which Adonai your God brought you out. Adonai will do the same to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ²⁰ Moreover, Adonai your God will send the hornet among them until those who are left and those who hide themselves perish ahead of you. ²¹ You are not to be frightened of them, because Adonai your God is there with you, a God great and fearsome. ²² Adonai your God will expel those nations ahead of you little by little; you can’t put an end to them all at once, or the wild animals will become too numerous for you. ²³ Nevertheless, Adonai your God will give them over to you, sending one disaster after another upon them until they have been destroyed. ²⁴ He will hand their kings over to you, and you will wipe out their name from under heaven; none of them will be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ You are to burn up completely the carved statues of their gods. Don’t be greedy for the silver or gold on them; don’t take it with you, or you will be trapped by it; for it is abhorrent to Adonai your God. ²⁶ Don’t bring something abhorrent into your house, or you will share in the curse that is on it; instead, you are to detest it completely, loathe it utterly; for it is set apart for destruction.

8 “All the mitzvot I am giving you today you are to take care to obey, so that you will live, increase your numbers, enter and take possession of the land Adonai swore about to your ancestors. ² You are to remember everything of the way in which Adonai led you these forty years in the desert, humbling and testing you in order to know what was in your heart — whether you would obey his mitzvot or not. ³ He humbled you, allowing you to become hungry, and then fed you with man, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, to make you understand that a person does not live on food alone but on everything that comes from the mouth of Adonai. ⁴ During these forty years the clothing you were wearing didn’t grow old, and your feet didn’t swell up. ⁵ Think deeply about it: Adonai was disciplining you, just as a man disciplines his child. ⁶ So obey the mitzvot of Adonai your God, living as he directs and fearing him. ⁷ For Adonai your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams, springs and water welling up from the depths in valleys and on hillsides. ⁸ It is a land of wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat food in abundance and lack nothing in it; a land where the stones contain iron and the hills can be mined for copper. ¹⁰ So you will eat and be satisfied, and you will bless Adonai your God for the good land he has given you.

(ii) ¹¹ “Be careful not to forget Adonai your God by not obeying his mitzvot, rulings and regulations that I am giving you today. ¹² Otherwise, after you have eaten and are satisfied, built fine houses and lived in them, ¹³ and increased your herds, flocks, silver, gold and everything else you own, ¹⁴ you will become proud-hearted. Forgetting Adonai your God — who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you lived as slaves; ¹⁵ who led you through the vast and fearsome desert, with its poisonous snakes, scorpions and waterless, thirsty ground; who brought water out of flint rock for you; ¹⁶ who fed you in the desert with man, unknown to your ancestors; all the while humbling and testing you in order to do you good in the end — ¹⁷ you will think to yourself, ‘My own power and the strength of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ No, you are to remember Adonai your God, because it is he who is giving you the power to get wealth, in order to confirm his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as is happening even today. ¹⁹ If you forget Adonai your God, follow other gods and serve and worship them, I am warning you in advance today that you will certainly perish. ²⁰ You will perish just like the nations that Adonai is causing to perish ahead of you, because you will not have heeded the voice of Adonai your God.”