A Chosen People

7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to apossess, and has cast out many bnations before you, cthe Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God delivers dthem over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. eYou shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 fNor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; gso the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. 5 But thus you shall deal with them: you shall hdestroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their 1wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.

6 “For you are a 2holy people to the Lord your God; ithe Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 7 The Lord did not set His jlove on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were kthe least of all peoples; 8 but lbecause the Lord loves you, and because He would keep mthe oath which He swore to your fathers, nthe Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of 3bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

9 “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, othe faithful God pwho keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not 4be qslack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.