Bible Commentaries
Deuteronomy 7

Verse 2

NO QUARTER!

‘Utterly destroy them.’

Deuteronomy 7:2

Like the rolling of a stone down a hillside, a nation’s downward progress may become uncontrollable, and then sudden extinction will be better far than continuance. Rather perish in childhood than grow up as men of Sodom, a plague-spot to the world, and begetters of children still worse than themselves, till the race slowly perishes from sheer iniquity.

I. It is for God only to command extermination; but when He does it is in mercy as well as in judgment. But note carefully the searching, spiritual lesson. If, in mercy to the children, to the world, and to succeding generations, no mercy was to be shown, how much more are we bound to be sternly merciless toward all sin! ‘The fear of the Lord is to hate evil’—yes, to the very death. But do we? Do we? ‘This is not quite right, I know; but others do it, and it’s such a little thing after all’—do we never speak so, at least, in our hearts? How many of us—the question is a most solemn one—how many of us really adopt, ‘No Quarter to Sin,’ as a life motto?

II. The judgments of God against sin may linger long, but in the end they are inflicted.—He does not pay at the termination of every week, one said, but at last He pays.

A father’s patience, a mother’s intercessions and hopes, the ingenuities of a friend’s love—these are almost limitless; but they are as nothing compared with the forbearance of God. Men of the world know how precious sometimes is the extension of credit for a month; but He gives me hundreds of months, and each of them is a month of privilege, of grace, of opportunity.

Yet let me remember that at length there is an end. It is delayed until the latest moment; and, before it comes, I receive innumerable invitations and calls and quickenings. But, one day, the respite will run out and the doom will descend.

Because the sands in the hour-glass may be almost spent, let me cast away the weapons of my rebellion, and make surrender of myself to my God.

Illustration

(1) ‘As to the rigorous destruction of the Canaanites, here commanded, two things are to be observed. (1) That it was a judicial act on the part of God. The iniquity of the Amorites, which was not yet full, Genesis 15:16, was now full. God had patiently endured their inquities, He had given them space for repentance, He had sent among them the patriarchs, whose worship was a constant testimony to the true God, had warned by the solemn judgments upon the cities of the plain, and they had resisted all. The times of retribution for these nations had come, as it came to the world before the Flood, as it came to Sodom and Gomorrah. He who used the forces and elements of the natural world in carrying out His judgments in other cases, now uses as His instruments the Israelites. But (2) it is clear here that the Israelites acted by an express and definite divine command. They were not actuated by desire of conquest or gain, or by worldly ambition. This was expressly and carefully guarded against in the very grant of the land made to them, and in the fact that they were strictly enjoined to come to all other nations than the dwellers in Canaan with offers of peace. They were further warned, and that repeatedly, and in the most impressive way, that a like sin on their part would involve a like destruction. There were also great moral ends to be secured with respect to Israel to guard it from the contamination of heathenism, and with respect to all men to set forth, as in a rehearsal, the retributive process which is going forward now in the history of nations, and which shall reach its final act and consummation when Christ shall judge all whose iniquities are full.’

(2) ‘We must be merciless in our separation. So in the New Testament Christians are exhorted to marry only in the Lord; and equally stringent rules are given about worldly intercourse. Where these commands are violated, misery is inevitable. God can drive out the sevenfold power of sin from the hearts of all those who will hand the battle over into His hands; and are willing to cut off and destroy whatever would suggest sin. God’s reasons for thus cautioning His people are—(1) That He had chosen them to be His own; (2) The freeness of His grace, which had no cause outside itself; (3) Because of the holy covenant into which He had entered, as the faithful God, and from which He would not recede. What incentives were these to obedience! Surely, as He was only for them, they should be only for Him. And there is not one of these arguments that does not apply with even tenfold weight to ourselves.’

(3) ‘Religiously, the Canaanites occupied a much lower level than the Israelites. They practised a form of nature worship. Their chief gods were Baal and his consort Astarte (Ashtoreth). These were thought of, however, not as standing in any inherent relation to the worshipper, but as owners or inhabitants of some particular place. Each locality had thus its own god or goddess (Baal or Baalath). Hence such compounds as Baal-meon, Baal-peor, etc. Numerous altars were erected to these deities throughout the land, on the hilltops, and under the evergreen trees. They were worshipped as the givers of fertility and fruitful seasons. But Baal-worship in all its forms was a degrading cult, associated with cruel and impure rites, and those who practised it could not possibly stand before the assault of foes whose courage and manhood were braced by the pure worship of Jehovah. At length the iniquity of the Amorites was full, and God commissioned the Hebrews to execute judgment on them by destroying or driving them out of the land.’

Verses 22-23

LITTLE BY LITTLE!

‘And the Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little,’ etc.

Deuteronomy 7:22-23

I. There can be no doubt that these passages represent the Jewish nation as bound to a perpetual conflict with idolatry.—The resistance was primarily an internal one. The members of the nation were never to bow down to natural or human symbols. But they were not merely to be tenacious of the true worship and watchful against the false; they were to go forth against the idolatrous people of Canaan, to break in pieces their gods, to destroy their altars and high places. And not only the idol or the idol temple was to be destroyed; the inhabitants of the idolatrous country, their wives, their children, their sheep, and their oxen, were to be put to death.

In explaining these facts, we must remember that the Jews were the one nation that might not go out to win prizes for themselves; they were simply the instruments of the righteous Lord against those who were polluting His earth and rendering it unfit for habitation.

II. We have surely not learned from the Sermon on the Mount that there is not a righteous Being, One whose will is to all good, One to whom injustice and wrong are opposed.—Neither did our Lord say that men were not to be the instruments in doing God’s work, in carrying out His purposes. The Gospel must be quite as assertive and intrusive as Judaism. Idolatry was more directly assaulted in its high places, received more deadly wounds, in the three centuries during which the Gospel of the Son of God was opposed by all the swords of the Roman empire, and when it had no earthly sword of its own, than by all the battles of the Israelites. The punishment of the idolater is not now the most effectual means of extinguishing idolatry. Our Lord shows us that the proclamation of Himself is a more perfect one.

III. These distinctions are deep and radical; they must affect all the relations between the magistrate and the herald of the Gospel, between the nation and the Church.

If we have learned to believe that the spirit of love is a consuming fire, which must destroy the idols and high places that we ourselves have set up, and then all those which are withdrawing men anywhere from the living and true God, we shall find that the command to drive out the debased people of Canaan is an utterance of the same gracious will which bade the disciples go into all lands and preach the Gospel to every creature.

Rev. F. D. Maurice.

Illustration

‘The reason assigned for gradual conquest in regard to Israel was that if the nations of Canaan were consumed “at once,” before Israel had time to settle the land, wild beasts would increase and take possession of depopulated wastes. In like manner, if we were to obtain complete victory over our spiritual foes at one blow, the probability is that we should be so elated at our success as to be filled with pride and self-confidence. Hence it is needful that victory should not outstrip occupation. In Joshua 10:40-42 we see the process exemplified. The inhabitants of the country and their kings were smitten, and concurrently therewith, the land was taken possession of.

The manner in which the gradual conquest was effected in the case of Israel, and may be effected in our own, is revealed to us as clearly as the need for it. In Deuteronomy 7:23-24, God promised to deliver the nations and their kings into the hand of Israel in order to be destroyed. In Joshua 11:19-20, we read of the fulfilment of this promise. Influenced by God (we cannot say how, nor is it necessary for us to know), the doomed nations marched to attack Israel, and in so doing merely brought about their own overthrow. So, when the forces of evil assail our spirits, let us take courage by remembering that their attack is but the indispensable prelude to their overthrow, if we face them in the name and strength of God.’