No Mixing With Idolaters

7 “When Adonai your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out many nations before you—the Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you— ² and Adonai your God gives them over to you and you strike them down, then you are to utterly destroy them. You are to make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. ³ You are not to intermarry with them—you are not to give your daughter to his son, or take his daughter for your son. ⁴ For he will turn your son away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of Adonai will be kindled against you, and He will swiftly destroy you. ⁵ Instead, you are to deal with them like this: tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their carved images with fire. ⁶ For you are a holy people to Adonai your God—from all the peoples on the face of the earth, Adonai your God has chosen you to be His treasured people.^[a]

⁷ “It is not because you are more numerous than all the peoples that Adonai set His love on you and chose you—for you are the least of all peoples. ⁸ Rather, because of His love for you and His keeping the oath He swore to your fathers, Adonai brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

⁹ “Know therefore that Adonai your God, He is God—the faithful God who keeps covenant kindness for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His mitzvot, ^{[b] 10} but repays those who hate Him to their face, to annihilate them. He will not hesitate with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. ¹¹ Therefore you are to keep the commandment—both the statutes and the ordinances—that I am commanding you today, to do them.