Deuteronomy 7-9

New International Reader's Version

The Lord Will Drive Out Many Nations

7 The Lord your God will bring you into the land. You are going to enter it and take it as your own. He’ll drive out many nations to make room for you. He’ll drive out the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Those seven nations are larger and stronger than you are. ² The Lord your God will hand them over to you. You will win the battle over them. You must completely destroy them. Don’t make a peace treaty with them. Don’t show them any mercy. ³ Don’t marry any of their people. Don’t give your daughters to their sons. And don’t take their daughters for your sons. ⁴ If you do, those people will turn your children away from serving the Lord. Then your children will serve other gods. The Lord will be very angry with you. He will quickly destroy you. ⁵ So here is what you must do to those people. Break down their altars. Smash their sacred stones. Cut down the poles they use to worship the female god named Asherah. Burn the statues of their gods in the fire. ⁶ You are a holy nation. The Lord your God has set you apart for himself. He has chosen you to be his special treasure. He chose you out of all the nations on the face of the earth to be his people.

⁷ The Lord chose you because he loved you very much. He didn’t choose you because you had more people than other nations. In fact, you had the smallest number of all. ⁸ The Lord chose you because he loved you. He wanted to keep the promise he had made to your people of long ago. That’s why he used his mighty hand to bring you out of Egypt. He bought you back from the land where you were slaves. He set you free from the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. ⁹ So I want you to realize that the Lord your God is God. He is the faithful God. He keeps his covenant for all time to come. He keeps it with those who love him and obey his commandments. He shows them his love. ¹⁰ But he will pay back those who hate him. He’ll destroy them. He’ll quickly pay back those who hate him. ¹¹ So be careful to obey the commands, rules and laws I’m giving you today.

¹² Pay attention to the laws of the Lord your God. Be careful to obey them. Then he will keep his covenant of love with you. That’s what he promised to your people of long ago. ¹³ The Lord will love you and bless you. He’ll cause there to be many of you. He’ll give you many children. He’ll bless the crops of your land. He’ll give you plenty of grain, olive oil and fresh wine. He’ll bless your herds with many calves. He’ll give your flocks many lambs. He’ll do all these things for you in the land of Canaan. It’s the land he promised your people of long ago that he would give you. ¹⁴ He will bless you more than any other nation. All your men and women will have children. All your livestock will have little ones. ¹⁵ The Lord will keep you from getting sick. He won’t send on you any of the horrible sicknesses you saw all around you in Egypt. But he’ll send them on everyone who hates you. ¹⁶ You must destroy all the nations the Lord your God hands over to you. Don’t feel sorry for them. Don’t serve their gods. If you do, they will be a trap for you.

¹⁷ You might say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” ¹⁸ But don’t be afraid of them. Be sure to remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all the Egyptians. ¹⁹ With your own eyes you saw what the Lord did to them. You saw the signs and amazing things he did. He reached out his mighty hand and powerful arm. The Lord your God used all those things to bring you out. You are now afraid of the nations that are in the land the Lord promised you. But the Lord your God will do to them the same things he did to Egypt. ²⁰ The Lord your God will also send hornets among those nations. Some of the people left alive will hide from you. But even they will die. ²¹ So don’t be terrified by them. The Lord your God is with you. He is a great and wonderful God. ²² The Lord your God will drive out those nations to make room for you. But he will do it little by little. You won’t be allowed to get rid of them all at once. If you did, wild animals would multiply all around you. ²³ But the Lord your God will hand those nations over to you. He will throw them into a panic until they are destroyed. ²⁴ He will hand their kings over to you. You will wipe out their names from the earth. No one will be able to stand up against you. You will destroy them. ²⁵ Burn the statues of their gods in the fire. Don’t wish for the silver and gold on those statues. Don’t take it for yourselves. If you do, it will be a trap for you. The Lord your God hates it. ²⁶ Don’t bring anything he hates into your house. If you do, you will be completely destroyed along with it. So hate it with all your heart. It is set apart to be destroyed.

Remember What the Lord Has Done

8 Make sure you obey every command I’m giving you today. Then you will live, and there will be many of you. You will enter the land and take it as your own. It’s the land the Lord promised to your people of long ago. ² Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way. He guided you in the desert for these 40 years. He wanted to take your pride away. He wanted to test you to know what was in your hearts. He wanted to see whether you would obey his commands. ³ He took your pride away. He let you go hungry. Then he gave you manna to eat. You and your parents had never even known anything about manna before. He tested you to teach you that man doesn’t live only on bread. He also lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ Your clothes didn’t wear out during these 40 years. Your feet didn’t swell. ⁵ Here is what I want you to know in your hearts. The Lord your God guides you, just as parents guide their children.

⁶ Obey the commands of the Lord your God. Live as he wants you to live. Have respect for him. ⁷ The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. It has brooks, streams and deep springs of water. Those springs flow in its valleys and hills. ⁸ It has wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey. ⁹ There is plenty of food in that land. You will have everything you need. Its rocks have iron in them. And you can dig copper out of its hills.

¹⁰ When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God. Praise him for the good land he has given you. ¹¹ Make sure you don’t forget the Lord your God. Don’t fail to obey his commands, laws and rules. I’m giving them to you today. ¹² But suppose you don’t obey his commands. And suppose you have plenty to eat. You build fine houses and live in them. ¹³ The number of your herds and flocks increases. You also get more and more silver and gold. And everything you have multiplies. ¹⁴ Then your hearts will become proud. And you will forget the Lord your God. The Lord brought you out of Egypt. That’s the land where you were slaves. ¹⁵ He led you through that huge and terrible desert. It was a dry land. It didn’t have any water. It had poisonous snakes and scorpions. The Lord gave you water out of solid rock. ¹⁶ He gave you manna to eat in the desert. Your people had never even known anything about manna before. The Lord took your pride away. He tested you. He did it so that things would go well with you in the end. ¹⁷ You might say to yourself, “My power and my strong hands have made me rich.” ¹⁸ But remember the Lord your God. He gives you the ability to produce wealth. That shows he stands by the terms of the covenant he made with you. He promised it to your people of long ago. And he’s still faithful to his covenant today.

¹⁹ Don’t forget the Lord your God. Don’t serve other gods. Don’t worship them and bow down to them. I am a witness against you today that if you do, you will certainly be destroyed. ²⁰ You will be destroyed just like the nations the Lord your God is destroying to make room for you. That’s what will happen if you don’t obey him.

Why the Lord Gave Canaan to Israel

9 Israel, listen to me. You are now about to go across the Jordan River. You will take over the land of the nations that live there. Those nations are greater and stronger than you are. Their large cities have walls that reach up to the sky. ² The people who live there are Anakites. They are strong and tall. You know all about them. You have heard people say, “Who can stand up against the Anakites?” ³ But today you can be sure the Lord your God will go over there ahead of you. He is like a fire that will burn them up. He’ll destroy them. He’ll bring them under your control. You will drive them out. You will put an end to them quickly, just as the Lord has promised you.

⁴ The Lord your God will drive them out to make room for you. When he does, don’t say to yourself, “The Lord has done it because I am godly. That’s why he brought me here to take over this land.” That isn’t true. The Lord is going to drive out those nations to make room for you because they are very evil. ⁵ You are not going in to take over their land because you have done what is right or honest. It’s because those nations are so evil. That’s why the Lord your God will drive them out to make room for you. He will do what he said he would do. He made a promise to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ⁶ The Lord your God is giving you this good land to take as your own. But you must understand that it isn’t because you are a godly nation. In fact, you are stubborn.

Israel Worshiped the Golden Calf

⁷ Here is something you must remember. Never forget it. You made the Lord your God angry in the desert. You refused to obey him from the day you left Egypt until you arrived here. ⁸ At Mount Horeb you made the Lord angry enough to destroy you. ⁹ I went up the mountain. I went there to receive the tablets of the covenant law. They were made out of stone. It was the covenant the Lord had made with you. I stayed on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. I didn’t eat any food or drink any water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me two stone tablets. The words on them were written by the finger of God. All the commandments the Lord gave you were written on the tablets. He announced them to you out of the fire on the mountain. He wrote them on the day you gathered together there.

¹¹ The 40 days and 40 nights came to an end. Then the Lord gave me the two stone tablets. They were the tablets of the covenant law. ¹² The Lord told me, “Go down from here right away. The people you brought out of Egypt have become very sinful. They have quickly turned away from what I commanded them. They have made a statue of a god for themselves.”

¹³ The Lord also said to me, “I have seen these people. They are so stubborn! ¹⁴ Do not try to stop me. I am going to destroy them. I will wipe them out from the earth. Then I will make you into a great nation. Your people will be stronger than they were. There will be more of you than there were of them.”

¹⁵ So I turned and went down the mountain. It was blazing with fire. I was carrying the two tablets of the covenant law. ¹⁶ When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a metal statue of a god. It looked like a calf. You had quickly turned away from the path the Lord had commanded you to follow. ¹⁷ So I threw the two tablets out of my hands. You watched them break into pieces.

¹⁸ Then once again I fell down flat in front of the Lord with my face toward the ground. I lay there for 40 days and 40 nights. I didn’t eat any food or drink any water. You had committed a terrible sin. You had done an evil thing in the Lord’s sight. You had made him angry. ¹⁹ I was afraid of the Lord’s great anger. He was so angry with you he wanted to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me again. ²⁰ And he was so angry with Aaron he wanted to destroy him too. But at that time I prayed for Aaron. ²¹ I also got that sinful calf you had made. I burned it in the fire. I crushed it and ground it into fine powder. Then I threw the powder into a stream that was flowing down the mountain.

²² You also made the Lord angry at Taberah, Massah and Kibroth Hattaavah.

²³ The Lord sent you out from Kadesh Barnea. He said, “Go up and take over the land I have given you.” But you refused to do what the Lord your God had commanded you to do. You didn’t trust him or obey him. ²⁴ You have been refusing to obey the Lord as long as I’ve known you.

²⁵ I lay down in front of the Lord with my face toward the ground for 40 days and 40 nights. I did it because the Lord had said he would destroy you. ²⁶ I prayed to him. “Lord and King,” I said, “don’t destroy your people. They belong to you. You set them free by your great power. You used your mighty hand to bring them out of Egypt. ²⁷ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Forgive the Israelites for being so stubborn. Don’t judge them for the evil and sinful things they’ve done. ²⁸ If you do, the Egyptians will say, ‘The Lord wasn’t able to take them into the land he had promised to give them. He hated them. So he brought them out of Egypt to put them to death in the desert.’ ²⁹ But they are your people. They belong to you. You used your great power to bring them out of Egypt. You reached out your mighty arm and saved them.”