Deuteronomy 7:4

For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Deuteronomy 7:4. To serve other gods — That is, there is manifest danger of apostacy and idolatry from such matches. Which reason doth both limit the prohibition to such of these as were unconverted, (otherwise Salmon married Rachab, Matthew 1:5,) and also enlarges it to other idolatrous nations, as appears from 1 Kings 11:2; Ezra 9:2; Nehemiah 13:23.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:1-11 Here is a strict caution against all friendship and fellowship with idols and idolaters. Those who are in communion with God, must have no communication with the unfruitful works of darkness. Limiting the orders to destroy, to the nations here mentioned, plainly shows that after ages were not to draw this into a precedent. A proper understanding of the evil of sin, and of the mystery of a crucified Saviour, will enable us to perceive the justice of God in all his punishments, temporal and eternal. We must deal decidedly with our lusts that war against our souls; let us not show them any mercy, but mortify, and crucify, and utterly destroy them. Thousands in the world that now is, have been undone by ungodly marriages; for there is more likelihood that the good will be perverted, than that the bad will be converted. Those who, in choosing yoke-fellows, keep not within the bounds of a profession of religion, cannot promise themselves helps meet for them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

See Deuteronomy 6:10 note.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2-6. thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them—This relentless doom of extermination which God denounced against those tribes of Canaan cannot be reconciled with the attributes of the divine character, except on the assumption that their gross idolatry and enormous wickedness left no reasonable hope of their repentance and amendment. If they were to be swept away like the antediluvians or the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, as incorrigible sinners who had filled up the measure of their iniquities, it mattered not to them in what way the judgment was inflicted; and God, as the Sovereign Disposer, had a right to employ any instruments that pleased Him for executing His judgments. Some think that they were to be exterminated as unprincipled usurpers of a country which God had assigned to the posterity of Eber and which had been occupied ages before by wandering shepherds of that race, till, on the migration of Jacob's family into Egypt through the pressure of famine, the Canaanites overspread the whole land, though they had no legitimate claim to it, and endeavored to retain possession of it by force. In this view their expulsion was just and proper. The strict prohibition against contracting any alliances with such infamous idolaters was a prudential rule, founded on the experience that "evil communications corrupt good manners" [1Co 15:33], and its importance or necessity was attested by the unhappy examples of Solomon and others in the subsequent history of Israel.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

i.e. There is manifest danger of apostacy and idolatry from such matches; which reason doth both limit the law to such of these as were unconverted, otherwise Salmon married Rahab, Matthew 1:5, and enlarge it to other idolatrous nations, as appears from 1 Kings 11:2 Ezra 9:2 Nehemiah 13:23.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For they will turn away thy son from following me,.... From the pure worship of God, his word, statutes, and ordinances:

that they may serve other gods; worship their idols; that is, the daughters of Heathens, married to the sons of Israelites, would entice them from the worship of the true God to idolatry; so the Targum of Jonathan; as Solomon's wives drew him aside: or "he will turn away thy son" (d); meaning, as Jarchi observes, that the son of an Heathen, that marries the daughter of an Israelite, will turn away the son born of her to idolatry, called here the grandfather's son; though Aben Ezra says this respects the son mentioned in the preceding verse, that is, the son married to an Heathen woman, and not to a son born in such marriage:

so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly; by some immediate judgment striking dead at once; there being nothing more provoking to God than idolatry, that being directly contrary to his being, nature, perfections, honour, and glory, of which he is jealous.

(d) "faciet recedere": Pagninus, Montanus; so Junius and Tremellius, Piscator, Tigurine version, Vatablus, V. L. all in the singular number.

Geneva Study Bible

For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

4. turn away thy son from following me] Expressed differently in Exodus 34:16 b but to the same effect, that the influence of the foreign wife on her Israelite husband will be to lead him into idolatry. From after me (lit.): as the speaker is Moses, the me has been taken to be due to abbreviation of the divine name, and Jehovah is read; but in that case we should have had Jehovah thy God. Therefore retain me and take this as an instance, occurring again in Deuteronomy 17:3, Deuteronomy 28:20, Deuteronomy 29:5 (4), and frequent in the discourses of the prophets, of the merging of the speaker’s personality in that of the Deity, for whom he speaks.

against you] Transition for the moment to the Pl. (confirmed by Sam. and LXX). It is impossible to say whether this is original or an editorial addition.

quickly] Deuteronomy 4:26.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 4. - From following me; literally, from after me, i.e. from being my servant and worshipper. Suddenly; rather, speedily (מהֵר, infin., of מָהַר, to be quick, to hasten, used as an adverb). Deuteronomy 7:4

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

As the Israelites were warned against idolatry in Deuteronomy 6:14, so here are they exhorted to beware of the false tolerance of sparing the Canaanites and enduring their idolatry. - Deuteronomy 7:1, Deuteronomy 7:5. When the Lord drove out the tribes of Canaan before the Israelites, and gave them up to them and smote them, they were to put them under the ban (see at Leviticus 27:28), to make no treaty with them, and to contract no marriage with them. נשׁל, to draw out, to cast away, e.g., the sandals (Exodus 3:5); here and Deuteronomy 7:22 it signifies to draw out, or drive out a nation from its country and possessions: it occurs in this sense in the Piel in 2 Kings 16:6. On the Canaanitish tribes, see at Genesis 10:15. and Deuteronomy 15:20-21. There are seven of them mentioned here, as in Joshua 3:10 and Joshua 24:11; on the other hand, there are only six in Deuteronomy 20:17, as in Exodus 3:8, Exodus 3:17; Exodus 23:23, and Exodus 33:2, the Girgashites being omitted. The prohibition against making a covenant, as in Exodus 23:32 and Exodus 34:12, and that against marrying, as in Exodus 34:16, where the danger of the Israelites being drawn away to idolatry is mentioned as a still further reason for these commands. יסיר כּי, "for he (the Canaanite) will cause thy son to turn away from behind me," i.e., tempt him away from following me, "to serve other gods." Moses says "from following me," because he is speaking in the name of Jehovah. The consequences of idolatry, as in Deuteronomy 6:15; Deuteronomy 4:26, etc.