Deuteronomy 7:1-13 ▼

1 And when the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land, into which thou goest to possess it, and shall remove great nations from before thee, the Chettite, and Gergesite, and Amorite, and Chananite, and Pherezite, and Evite, and Jebusite, seven nations more numerous and stronger than you,

2 and the Lord thy God shall deliver them into thy hands, then thou shalt smite them: thou shalt utterly destroy them: thou shalt not make a covenant with them, neither shall ye pity them:

3 neither shall ye contract marriages with them: thou shalt not give thy daughter to his son, and thou shalt not take his daughter to thy son.

4 For he will draw away thy son from me, and he will serve other gods; and the Lord will be very angry with you, and will soon utterly destroy thee.

5 But thus shall ye do to them; ye shall destroy their altars, and shall break down their pillars, and shall cut down their groves, and shall burn with fire the graven images of their gods.

6 For thou art a holy people to the Lord thy God; and the Lord thy God chose thee to be to him a peculiar people beyond all nations that are upon the face of the earth.

7 It was not because ye are more numerous than all other nations that the Lord preferred you, and the Lord made choice of you: for ye are fewer in number than all other nations.

8 But because the Lord loved you, and as keeping the oath which he sware to your fathers, the Lord brought you out with a strong hand, and the Lord redeemed thee from the house of bondage, out of the hand of Pharao king of Egypt.

9 Thou shalt know therefore, that the Lord thy God, he is God, a faithful God, who keeps covenant and mercy for them that love him, and for those that keep his commandments to a thousand generations,

10 and who recompenses them that hate him to their face, to destroy them utterly; and will not be slack with them that hate him: he will recompense them to their face.

11 Thou shalt keep therefore the commands, and the ordinances, and these judgments, which I command thee this day to do.

12 And it shall come to pass when ye shall have heard these ordinances, and shall have kept and done them, that the Lord thy God shall keep for thee the covenant and the mercy, which he sware to your fathers.

13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee; and he will bless the off-spring of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the herds of thine oxen, and the flocks of thy sheep, on the land which the Lord sware to thy fathers to give to thee.