Deuteronomy 7:1-13 ▼

1 When the LORD your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before you, the Hethite, 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 shall deliver them up before you, and you shall strike them; then you shall utterly destroy them: you shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them;

3 neither shall you make marriages with them; your daughter you shall not give to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son.

4 For he will turn away your son from following me, that he may serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.

5 But you shall deal with them like this: you shall break down their altars, and dash their pillars in pieces, and cut down their Asherim, and burn their engraved images with fire.

6 For you are a holy people to the LORD your God: The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth.

7 The LORD did not set his love on you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples:

8 but because the LORD loves you, and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, has the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

9 Know therefore that the LORD your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with them who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations,

10 and repays those who hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him who hates him, he will repay him to his face.

11 You shall therefore keep the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which I command you this day, to do them.

12 It shall happen, because you listen to these ordinances, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the loving kindness which he swore to your fathers:

13 and he will love you, and bless you, and multiply you; he will also bless the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your livestock and the young of your flock, in the land which he swore to your fathers to give you.