Deuteronomy 7

₁Moses said: ‘The Lord your God will bring you to the land where you are going, the land that you must take for yourselves. He will chase away many nations and give their land to you. There are 7 nations who are bigger and stronger than you. They are the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. ₂The Lord your God will defeat all these people and give them to you. You must kill all of them. Do not make an agreement with them and do not feel sorry for them. ₃You must not marry them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. ₄If you get married to them, your children will stop serving the Lord and they will start worshipping other gods. Then the Lord will become angry with you and you will all die quickly. ₅This is what you must do: You must break down their altars, destroy their sacred poles, break down their sacred_pillars and cut down their images and burn them. ₆You must do this because you are the holy people of the Lord your God. You are the people whom the Lord your God has chosen from all of the nations on earth. He chose you to be his own people. ₇The Lord loved you and He chose you, but He did not do it because you were bigger or better than the other nations. No, you were smaller than all the other nations. ₈God chose you because He loved you and He wanted to do what He had promised your forefathers. This is why the Lord has saved you with his great power and brought you from the land where you were slaves. He paid to free you from Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. ₉You must remember that the Lord your God is the only God. He is the faithful God, the God who does what He has promised in his covenant. He will do this for everyone who loves Him and who does what He says in his commandments. He will do this for a long time, for 1 000 generations. ₁₀But He will punish and kill everyone who does not love Him. He will not forget to punish them. ₁₁This is why you must do what the laws that I am giving you today say.’

₁₂‘If you obey these laws and do what they say, then the Lord your God will do what He has promised your forefathers in his covenant. ₁₃He will love you and He will bless you. He will give you lots of children and make your nation become very big. He will give you big wheat harvests, a lot of wine and olive oil and a lot of calves and lambs. He will do this all for you in the land that He promised to give to your forefathers. ₁₄The Lord will bless you more than the other nations. Every man and woman will have children, every cow will have calves and every sheep and goat ewe will have lambs. ₁₅The Lord will stop you from getting sick, and you will not get any of the diseases from Egypt. The Lord will not let those diseases come to you. He will send those diseases to people who hate you. ₁₆You will defeat all nations and kill them, all the people that the Lord your God will give to you. Do not feel sorry for them, and do not serve their gods, because then you will fall into a trap. ₁₇Maybe you will think that they are stronger than you and there are more people than in your nation, and that you can not chase them away and take their land for yourselves. ₁₈But you must not be afraid of them. Remember and do not forget what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the Egyptians. ₁₉You saw how the Lord your God made them suffer. You saw the signs, the miracles and his great power that He used to save you and bring you out of Egypt. The Lord your God will do the same with all the nations that you are afraid of. ₂₀Yes, the Lord your God will send dangerous bees to those people, and none of them will be able to hide or stay alive. ₂₁Do not be afraid of those people because the Lord your God is with you and He is a great God. Everyone fears Him. ₂₂The Lord your God will chase away those people before you, but you will not be able to kill them all at the same time, because then the wild animals in the land will become too many for you. ₂₃The Lord your God will help you defeat them and they will become afraid of you and not know what to do. God will help you until you have killed them all. ₂₄The Lord will help you defeat their kings and no one on earth will remember their names. No one is strong enough or will be able to stand against you in war. You will kill them all. ₂₅But you must burn the images of their gods. Do not try to keep the silver and gold from their images for yourself. Do not take it, because then you will fall into a trap. The Lord your God hates those images. ₂₆These are things which the Lord hates. Do not bring them into your homes because then you will also die. You must hate those things and destroy them.’