Drive Out the Nations

1“When the Lord your God will have led you to the land, which you will enter so as to possess it, and when he will have destroyed 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 much more numerous than you, and more robust than you, 2and when the Lord your God will have delivered them to you, you shall strike them down unto utter annihilation. You shall not enter into a pact with them, nor shall you show any pity to them. 3And you shall not associate with them in marriage. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor accept his daughter for your son. 4For she will seduce your son, so that he will not follow me, and so that he will instead serve foreign gods. And the fury of the Lord will be enraged, and he will quickly destroy you. 5So instead, you shall do this to them: overturn their altars, and break their statues, and cut down their sacred groves, and burn up their graven images. 6For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you so that you would be his particular people out of all the peoples who are upon the earth.

7It is not because you surpass all the nations in number that the Lord has joined with you and has chosen you, for you are the least numerous of any people. 8But it is because the Lord has loved you, and has kept his oath, which he swore to your fathers. And he has led you away with a strong hand, and he has redeemed you from the house of servitude, from the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. 9And you shall know that the Lord your God himself is a strong and faithful God, preserving his covenant and his mercy for those who love him and those who keep his precepts for a thousand generations, 10and promptly repaying those who hate him, so as to utterly ruin them, without further delay, quickly rendering to them what they deserve. 11Therefore, keep the precepts and ceremonies as well as the judgments, which I command to you this day, so that you may do them.

The Promises of God
(Exodus 23:20–33)

12If, after you have heard these judgments, you keep and do them, the Lord your God will also keep his covenant with you and the mercy that he swore to your fathers. 13And he will love you and multiply you. And he will bless the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your land: your grain as well as your vintage, oil, and herds, and the flocks of your sheep, upon the land about which he swore to your fathers that he would give it to you. 14Blessed shall you be among all peoples. No one will be barren among you of either gender, as much among men as among your herds. 15The Lord will take all sickness away from you. And the very grievous infirmities of Egypt, which you have known, he will not bring upon you, but upon your enemies. 16You shall devour all the peoples, which the Lord your God will deliver to you. Your eye shall not spare them, neither shall you serve their gods, lest they be your ruin.

17If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are more than I am, so how will I be able to destroy them?’ 18do not be apprehensive. Instead, recall what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the Egyptians: 19the very great plagues, which your eyes saw, and the signs and wonders, and the powerful hand and outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God led you away. So will he do to all the peoples, whom you dread. 20Moreover, the Lord your God will also send hornets among them, until he destroys and scatters all who have escaped from you, or who have been able to hide. 21You shall not fear them, for the Lord your God is in your midst: a great and terrible God. 22He himself will consume these nations in your sight, a little at a time, by degrees. You will not be able to destroy them all at once. Otherwise, the wild beasts of the earth might increase against you. 23And so, the Lord your God will present them in your sight, and you shall slay them until they are thoroughly wiped away. 24And he shall deliver their kings into your hands, and you shall abolish their names from under heaven. No one will be able to withstand you, until you crush them. 25Their graven images, you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or gold from which they have been made. And you shall not take for yourself anything from these, lest you offend, because this is an abomination to the Lord your God. 26Neither shall you carry anything of the idol into your house, lest you become accursed, just as it also is. You shall detest it like dung, and you shall abominate it like defilement and filth, because it is an accursed thing.”