Deuteronomy 7-8
Easy-to-Read Version
Israel, God’s Special People
7 “The Lord your God will lead you into the land that you are entering to take for your own. He will force out many nations for you—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—seven nations greater and more powerful than you. 2 The Lord your God will put these nations under your power. And you will defeat them. You must destroy them completely. Don’t make an agreement with them or show them mercy. 3 Don’t marry any of them, and don’t let your sons or daughters marry any of the people from those other nations. 4 If you do, they will turn your children away from following me. Then your children will serve other gods, and the Lord will be very angry with you. He will quickly destroy you!
Destroy False Gods
5 “This is what you must do to those nations: You must smash their altars and break their memorial stones into pieces. Cut down their Asherah poles and burn their statues. 6 Do this because you are the Lord’s own people. From all the people on earth, the Lord your God chose you to be his special people—people who belong only to him. 7 Why did the Lord love and choose you? It was not because you are such a large nation. You had the fewest of all people! 8 But the Lord brought you out of Egypt with great power and made you free from slavery. He freed you from the control of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. The Lord did this because he loves you and he wanted to keep the promise he made to your ancestors.
9 “So remember that the Lord your God is the only God, and you can trust him! He keeps his agreement. He shows his love and kindness to all people who love him and obey his commands. He continues to show his love and kindness through a thousand generations, 10 but the Lord punishes people who hate him. He will destroy them. He will not be slow to punish those who hate him. 11 So you must be careful to obey the commands, laws, and rules that I give you today.
12 “If you listen to these laws, and if you are careful to obey them, the Lord your God will keep his agreement of love with you. He promised this to your ancestors. 13 He will love you and bless you. He will make your nation grow. He will bless your children. He will bless your fields with good crops and will give you grain, new wine, and oil. He will bless your cows with calves and your sheep with lambs. You will have all these blessings in the land that he promised your ancestors to give you.
14 “You will be blessed more than all people. Every husband and wife will be able to have children. Your cows will be able to have calves. 15 The Lord will take away all sickness from you and he will not let you catch any of the terrible diseases that you had in Egypt. But he will make your enemies catch those diseases. 16 You must destroy all the people the Lord your God helps you defeat. Don’t feel sorry for them, and don’t worship their gods! They will trap you—they will ruin your life.
The Lord Promises to Help His People
17 “Don’t say in your heart, ‘These nations are stronger than we are. How can we force them out?’ 18 You must not be afraid of them. You must remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the people of Egypt. 19 You saw the great troubles he gave them and the amazing things he did. You saw the Lord use his great power and strength to bring you out of Egypt. The Lord your God will use that same power against all the people you fear.
20 “The Lord your God will send the hornet[a] against them. He will do this until he destroys all the people who escaped and tried to hide. 21 Don’t be afraid of them, because the Lord your God is with you. He is a great and awesome God. 22 The Lord your God will force those nations to leave your country little by little. You will not destroy them all at once. If you did, the wild animals would grow to be too many for you. 23 But the Lord your God will let you defeat those nations. He will confuse them in battle, until they are destroyed. 24 He will help you defeat their kings. You will kill them, and the world will forget they ever lived. No one will be able to stop you. You will destroy them all!
25 “You must throw the statues of their gods into the fire and burn them. You must not want to keep the silver or the gold that is on those statues for yourselves. It will be like a trap to you—it will ruin your life. The Lord your God hates those idols. 26 You must not bring any of those disgusting idols into your homes, or you will be destroyed just as they will be. You must treat them as the disgusting things they are! They are to be destroyed.
Remember the Lord
8 “You must obey all the commands that I give you today, because then you will live and grow to become a great nation. You will get the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 2 And you must remember the entire trip that the Lord your God has led you through these 40 years in the desert. He was testing you. He wanted to make you humble. He wanted to know what is in your heart. He wanted to know if you would obey his commands. 3 He humbled you and let you be hungry. Then he fed you with manna—something you did not know about before. It was something your ancestors had never seen. Why did the Lord do this? Because he wanted you to know that it is not just bread that keeps people alive. People’s lives depend on what the Lord says. 4 These past 40 years, your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell. 5 You must remember that the Lord your God teaches and corrects you as a father teaches and corrects his son.
6 “You must obey the commands of the Lord your God. Follow him and respect him. 7 The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with rivers and pools of water. Water flows out of the ground in the valleys and hills. 8 It is a land with wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees, and pomegranates. It is a land with olive oil and honey. 9 There you will have plenty of food and everything you need. It is a land where the rocks are iron. You can dig copper out of the hills. 10 You will have all you want to eat. Then you will praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
Don’t Forget What the Lord Did
11 “Be careful. Don’t forget the Lord your God! Be careful to obey the commands, laws, and rules that I give you today. 12 Then you will have plenty to eat, and you will build good houses and live in them. 13 Your cattle, sheep, and goats will grow large. You will get plenty of gold and silver. You will have plenty of everything. 14 When that happens, you must be careful not to become proud. You must not forget the Lord your God. You were slaves in Egypt, but he made you free and brought you out of that land. 15 He led you through that great and terrible desert where there were poisonous snakes and scorpions. The ground was dry, and there was no water anywhere. But he gave you water out of a solid rock. 16 In the desert he fed you manna—something your ancestors had never seen. He tested you to make you humble so that everything would go well for you in the end. 17 Don’t ever say to yourself, ‘I got all this wealth by my own power and ability.’ 18 Remember the Lord your God is the one who gives you power to do these things. He does this because he wants to keep the agreement that he made with your ancestors, as he is doing today!
19 “Don’t ever forget the Lord your God. Don’t ever follow other gods or worship and serve them. If you do that, I warn you today: You will surely be destroyed! 20 The Lord is destroying other nations for you. But if you stop listening to the Lord your God, you will be destroyed just like them!
Footnotes
- Deuteronomy 7:20 hornet A stinging insect like a large wasp or bee. Here, it might mean God’s angel or his great power.
Copyright © 2006 by Bible League International
