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God's Chosen People

¹ "The Lord your God will bring you into the land you are taking for your own. He will drive away many nations in front of you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations bigger and stronger than you. ² When the Lord your God gives them to you and you win the battles against them, you must destroy all of them. Make no agreement with them and show no favor to them. ³ Do not take any of them in marriage. Do not give your daughters to their sons. And do not take their daughters for your sons. ⁴ For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will burn against you. And He will be quick to destroy you. ⁵ But do this to them: Break down their altars. Crush their objects of worship. Cut down their female goddess Asherim. And burn their false gods with fire.

⁶ "For you are a holy nation to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the nations on the earth, to be His own. ⁷ The Lord did not give you His love and choose you because you were more people than any of the nations. For the number of your people was less than all nations. ⁸ But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the promise He made to your fathers. So the Lord brought you out by a strong hand. He set you free from the land where you were servants, and from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. ⁹ Know then that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God. He keeps His promise and shows His loving-kindness to those who love Him and keep His Laws, even to a thousand family groups in the future. ¹⁰ But He destroys those who hate Him. He will not show kindness to the one who hates Him, but will punish him to his face. ¹¹ So keep and obey all the Laws I am telling you today.

Good Comes to Those Who Obey

¹² "If you listen to these Laws and keep and obey them, the Lord your God will keep His agreement and loving-kindness as He promised to your fathers. ¹³ He will love you and bring good to you and make you a nation of many. He will bring good to your children and the fruit of your land, your grain, your new wine and your oil. And He will give you many cattle and young ones in your flock, in the land He promised to your fathers to give you. ¹⁴ More good will come to you than to any other nation. There will be no male or female among you or your cattle that is not able to have young ones. ¹⁵ The Lord will take all sickness from you. He will not let any bad diseases come upon you that you have known in Egypt. But He will give them to all who hate you. ¹⁶ You will destroy all the nations the Lord your God will give to you. You will not pity them or worship their gods, for that would be a trap to you.

¹⁷ "You may say in your heart, ‘These nations are stronger than I. How can I drive them out?' ¹⁸ But you will not be afraid of them. You will remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. ¹⁹ You will remember the hard trials you saw, the powerful works, and the strong hand and powerful arm the Lord your God used to bring you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the nations who make you afraid. ²⁰ And the Lord your God will send the hornet against them. Those who are left will hide themselves from you and be destroyed. ²¹ You will not be afraid of them. For the Lord your God is among you, a great and powerful God. ²² The Lord your God will drive away these nations in front of you one by one. You will not be able to destroy them in a short time, or the wild animals may become too many for you. ²³ But the Lord your God will give them to you. He will bring much trouble upon them until they are destroyed. ²⁴ He will give their kings into your hand. And you will destroy their name from under heaven. No man will be able to stand in front of you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ You must burn with fire their objects of worship. Do not want the silver or gold that is on them, or take it for yourselves. It would be a trap to you, for it is a hated thing to the Lord your God. ²⁶ Do not bring a hated thing into your house. You would become hated also. But turn from it with fear and hate, for bad will come from it.