Deuteronomy 7-8

The Message

7 ^1-2 When God, your God, brings you into the country that you are about to enter and take over, he will clear out the superpowers that were there before you: the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Those seven nations are all bigger and stronger than you are. God, your God, will turn them over to you and you will conquer them. You must completely destroy them, offering them up as a holy destruction to God.

Don’t make a treaty with them.

Don’t let them off in any way.

^3-4 Don’t marry them: Don’t give your daughters to their sons and don’t take their daughters for your sons—before you know it they’d involve you in worshiping their gods, and God would explode in anger, putting a quick end to you.

⁵ Here’s what you are to do:

⁶ Do this because you are a people set apart as holy to God, your God. God, your God, chose you out of all the people on Earth for himself as a cherished, personal treasure.

^7-10 God wasn’t attracted to you and didn’t choose you because you were big and important—the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. He did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise he made to your ancestors. God stepped in and mightily bought you back out of that world of slavery, freed you from the iron grip of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know this: God, your God, is God indeed, a God you can depend upon. He keeps his covenant of loyal love with those who love him and observe his commandments for a thousand generations. But he also pays back those who hate him, pays them the wages of death; he isn’t slow to pay them off—those who hate him, he pays right on time.

¹¹ So keep the command and the rules and regulations that I command you today. Do them.

^12-13 And this is what will happen: When you, on your part, will obey these directives, keeping and following them, God, on his part, will keep the covenant of loyal love that he made with your ancestors:

^13-15 He will bless the babies from your womb and the harvest of grain, new wine, and oil from your fields; he’ll bless the calves from your herds and lambs from your flocks in the country he promised your ancestors that he’d give you. You’ll be blessed beyond all other peoples: no sterility or barrenness in you or your animals. God will get rid of all sickness. And all the evil afflictions you experienced in Egypt he’ll put not on you but on those who hate you.

¹⁶ You’ll make mincemeat of all the peoples that God, your God, hands over to you. Don’t feel sorry for them. And don’t worship their gods—they’ll trap you for sure.

^17-19 You’re going to think to yourselves, “Oh! We’re outnumbered ten to one by these nations! We’ll never even make a dent in them!” But I’m telling you, Don’t be afraid. Remember, yes, remember in detail what God, your God, did to Pharaoh and all Egypt. Remember the great contests to which you were eyewitnesses: the miracle-signs, the wonders, God’s mighty hand as he stretched out his arm and took you out of there. God, your God, is going to do the same thing to these people you’re now so afraid of.

²⁰ And to top it off, the Hornet. God will unleash the Hornet on them until every survivor-in-hiding is dead.

^21-24 So don’t be intimidated by them. God, your God, is among you—majestic God, awesome God. God, your God, will get rid of these nations, bit by bit. You won’t be permitted to wipe them out all at once lest the wild animals take over and overwhelm you. But God, your God, will move them out of your way—he’ll throw them into a huge panic until there’s nothing left of them. He’ll turn their kings over to you and you’ll remove all trace of them under Heaven. Not one person will be able to stand up to you; you’ll put an end to them all.

^25-26 Make sure you set fire to their carved gods. Don’t get greedy for the veneer of silver and gold on them and take it for yourselves—you’ll get trapped by it for sure. God hates it; it’s an abomination to God, your God. And don’t dare bring one of these abominations home or you’ll end up just like it, burned up as a holy destruction. No: It is forbidden! Hate it. Abominate it. Destroy it and preserve God’s holiness.

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8 ^1-5 Keep and live out the entire commandment that I’m commanding you today so that you’ll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.

^6-9 So it’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.

¹⁰ After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.

^11-16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,

^17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.

^19-20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I’m on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You’ll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn’t obey the Voice of God, your God.

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