A Chosen People^(A)

7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to ^(B)possess, and has cast out many ^(C)nations before you, ^(D)the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, ² and when the Lord your God delivers ^(E)them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. ^(F)You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. ^3 (G)Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. ⁴ For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; ^(H)so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. ⁵ But thus you shall deal with them: you shall ^(I)destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their ^[a]wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.

⁶ “For you are a ^[b]holy people to the Lord your God; ^(J)the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. ⁷ The Lord did not set His ^(K)love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were ^(L)the least of all peoples; ⁸ but ^(M)because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep ^(N)the oath which He swore to your fathers, ^(O)the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of ^[c]bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

^4 (A)“Do not think in your heart, after the Lord your God has cast them out before you, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land’; but it is ^(B)because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out from before you. ^5 (C)It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out from before you, and that He may ^[a]fulfill the ^(D)word which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ⁶ Therefore understand that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a ^(E)stiff-necked^[b] people.

¹⁶ “But ^(A)of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, ¹⁷ but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, ¹⁸ lest ^(B)they teach you to do according to all their ^[a]abominations which they have done for their gods, and you ^(C)sin against the Lord your God.