The Dispossession of Nonvassals
1When the
2and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy!
3You must not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,
4for they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods. Then the anger of the
5Instead, this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, cut down their sacred Asherah poles, and burn up their idols.
6For you are a people holy to the
The Basis of Israel’s Election
7It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the
8Rather it is because of his love for you and his faithfulness to the promise he solemnly vowed to your ancestors that the
9So realize that the
10but who pays back those who hate him as they deserve and destroys them. He will not ignore those who hate him but will repay them as they deserve!
11So keep the commandments, statutes, and ordinances that I today am commanding you to do.
Promises of Good for Covenant Obedience
12If you obey these ordinances and are careful to do them, the
13He will love and bless you, and make you numerous. He will bless you with many children, with the produce of your soil, your grain, your new wine, your oil, the offspring of your oxen, and the young of your flocks in the land which he promised your ancestors to give you.
14You will be blessed beyond all peoples; there will be no barrenness among you or your livestock.
15The
Exhortation to Destroy Canaanite Paganism
16You must destroy all the people whom the
17If you think, “These nations are more numerous than I – how can I dispossess them?”
18you must not fear them. You must carefully recall what the
19the great judgments you saw, the signs and wonders, the strength and power by which he brought you out – thus the
20Furthermore, the
21You must not tremble in their presence, for the
22He, the God who leads you, will expel the nations little by little. You will not be allowed to destroy them all at once lest the wild animals overrun you.
23The
24He will hand over their kings to you and you will erase their very names from memory. Nobody will be able to resist you until you destroy them.
25You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the
26You must not bring any abhorrent thing into your house and thereby become an object of divine wrath along with it. You must absolutely detest and abhor it, for it is an object of divine wrath.