Warnings

7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to possess, and has cleared away many nations before you, the Hittite and the Girgashite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than you, ² and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall not make a covenant (treaty) with them nor show mercy and compassion to them. ³ You shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son; ⁴ for they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled and burn against you and He will quickly destroy you. ⁵ But this is how you shall deal with them: you shall tear down their altars and smash to pieces their sacred pillars, and cut down their Asherim (symbols of the goddess Asherah), and burn their carved or sculpted images in the fire. ⁶ For you are a holy people [set apart] to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people for His own possession [that is, His very special treasure].

⁷ “The Lord did not love you and choose you because you were greater in number than any of the other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. ⁸ But because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed (bought) you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. ⁹ Therefore know [without any doubt] and understand that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who is keeping His covenant and His [steadfast] lovingkindness to a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; ¹⁰ but repays those who hate Him to their faces, by destroying them; He will not hesitate with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face. ¹¹ Therefore, you shall keep (follow, obey) the commandment and the statutes and judgments (precepts) which I am commanding you today.

Promises of God

¹² “Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the [steadfast] lovingkindness which He swore to your fathers. ¹³ He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your [olive] oil, the offspring of your cattle and the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your fathers to give you. ¹⁴ You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no male or female barren (childless, infertile) among you or among your cattle. ¹⁵ The Lord will take away from you all sickness; and He will not subject you to any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will impose them on all [those] who hate you. ¹⁶ And you shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will give over to you; your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a [deadly] trap to you.

¹⁷ “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I am; how can I dispossess them?’ ¹⁸ you shall not be afraid of them; you shall remember [with confidence] what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt— ¹⁹ the great trials which you saw with your own eyes, and the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. So shall the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ²⁰ Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet (His terror) against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish. ²¹ You shall not dread them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. ²² The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for [if you did] the ^[a]wild animals would become too numerous for you. ²³ But the Lord your God will hand them over to you, and will confuse them with a great panic until they are destroyed. ²⁴ And He will hand over their kings to you, and you will make their name perish from under heaven; no man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ You shall burn the carved and sculpted images of their gods in the fire. You shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, so that you will not be ensnared by it [in a deadly trap], for it is an abomination (repulsive) to the Lord your God. ²⁶ You shall not bring an abomination (idol) into your house, and like it come under the ban (doomed to destruction); you shall utterly detest and you shall utterly hate it, for it is something banned.

God’s Gracious Dealings

8 “Every commandment that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, so that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore [to give] to your fathers. ² And you shall remember [always] all the ways which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart (mind), whether you would keep His commandments or not. ³ He humbled you and allowed you to be hungry and fed you with manna, [a substance] which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, so that He might make you understand [by personal experience] that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your feet swell these forty years. ⁵ Therefore, know in your heart (be fully cognizant) that the Lord your God disciplines and instructs you just as a man disciplines and instructs his son. ⁶ Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk [that is, to live each and every day] in His ways and fear [and worship] Him [with awe-filled reverence and profound respect].^{(A) 7} For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat bread without shortage, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. ¹⁰ When you have eaten and are satisfied, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.

¹¹ “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by failing to keep His commandments and His judgments (precepts) and His statutes which I am commanding you today; ¹² otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, ¹³ and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have increases, ¹⁴ then your heart will become lifted up [by self-conceit and arrogance] and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ¹⁵ He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; it was He who brought water for you out of the flinty rock. ¹⁶ He fed you manna in the wilderness, [a substance] which your fathers did not know, so that He might humble you [by dependence on Him] and that He might test you, to do good [things] for you at the end. ¹⁷ Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ But you shall remember [with profound respect] the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore (solemnly promised) to your fathers, as it is this day. ¹⁹ And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will most certainly perish. ²⁰ Like the nations which the Lord causes to perish before you, so shall you perish; because you would not listen to and obey the voice of the Lord your God.