1“When your God YHWH brings you into the land to where you are going in to possess it, and He has cast out many nations from your presence, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations more numerous and mighty than you,
2and your God YHWH has given them before you, then you have struck them—you utterly devote them—you do not make a covenant with them, nor do you favor them.
3And you do not join in marriage with them; you do not give your daughter to his son, and you do not take his daughter to your son,
4for he turns aside your son from after Me, and they have served other gods; and the anger of YHWH has burned against you and has destroyed you quickly.
5But thus you do to them: you break down their altars, and you shatter their standing pillars, and you cut down their Asherim, and you burn their carved images with fire.
6For you [are] a holy people to your God YHWH; your God YHWH has fixed on you, to be to Him for a peculiar people, out of all the peoples who [are] on the face of the ground. 7YHWH has delighted in you and fixes on you, not because of your being more numerous than any of the peoples, for you [are] the least of all the peoples, 8but because of YHWH’s loving you, and because of His keeping the oath which He has sworn to your fathers; YHWH has brought you out by a strong hand, and ransoms you from a house of servants, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9And you have known that He, your God YHWH, [is] God, the faithful God keeping the covenant and the kindness with those loving Him and with those keeping His commands, for one thousand generations, 10and repaying to those hating Him to their face, to destroy them; He does not delay to him who is hating Him, He repays [it] to him to his face. 11And you have kept the command, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I am commanding you today to do them. 12And it has been, because you hear these judgments, and have kept and done them, that your God YHWH has kept the covenant and the kindness with you which He has sworn to your fathers, 13and has loved you, and blessed you, and multiplied you, and has blessed the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground, your grain, and your new wine, and your oil, the increase of your oxen, and the wealth of your flock, on the ground which He has sworn to your fathers to give to you. 14Blessed are you above all the peoples; there is not a barren man or a barren woman in you—nor among your livestock; 15and YHWH has turned aside every sickness from you, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt (which you have known) does He put on you, and He has put them on all hating you. 16And you have consumed all the peoples whom your God YHWH is giving to you; your eye has no pity on them, and you do not serve their gods, for it [is] a snare to you. 17When you say in your heart, These nations [are] more numerous than I, how am I able to dispossess them? 18You are not afraid of them; you surely remember that which your God YHWH has done to Pharaoh and to all of Egypt, 19the great trials which your eyes have seen, and the signs, and the wonders, and the strong hand, and the outstretched arm, with which your God YHWH has brought you out; so does your God YHWH do to all the peoples of whose presence you are afraid. 20And your God YHWH also sends the locust among them, until the destruction of those who are left, even those who are hidden from your presence; 21you are not terrified by their presence, for your God YHWH [is] in your midst, a God great and fearful. 22And your God YHWH has cast out these nations from your presence little [by] little (you are not able to consume them quickly, lest the beast of the field multiplies against you), 23and your God YHWH has given them before you, and confused them [with] a great destruction until their being destroyed; 24and He has given their kings into your hand, and you have destroyed their name from under the heavens; no man stations himself in your presence until you have destroyed them. 25You burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you do not desire the silver and gold on them, nor have you taken [it] for yourself, lest you are snared by it, for it [is] an abomination [to] your God YHWH; 26and you do not bring in an abomination to your house, or you have been devoted like it—you utterly detest it and you utterly abhor it; for it [is] devoted.” |