1 When Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and shall cast out many nations from before thee, the 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 thou,
2 and when Jehovah thy God shall give them up before thee and thou shalt smite them, then shalt thou utterly destroy them: thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.
3 And thou shalt make no marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor take his daughter for thy son;
4 for he will turn away thy son from following me, and they will serve other gods, and the anger of Jehovah will be kindled against you, and he will destroy thee quickly.
5 But thus shall ye deal with them: ye shall break down their altars, and shatter their statues, and hew down their Asherahs, and burn their graven images with fire.
6 For a holy people art thou unto Jehovah thy God: Jehovah thy God hath chosen thee to be unto him a people for a possession, above all the peoples that are upon the face of the earth.
7 Not because ye were more in number than all the peoples, hath Jehovah been attached to you and chosen you, for ye are the fewest of all the peoples;
8 but because Jehovah loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath Jehovah brought you out with a powerful hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 And thou shalt know that Jehovah thy God, he is God, the faithful ùGod, who keepeth covenant and mercy to a thousand generations with them that love him and keep his commandments;
10 and repayeth them that hate him [each] to his face, to cause them to perish: he delayeth not with him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.
11 And thou shalt keep the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which I command thee this day, to do them.
12 And it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these ordinances, and keep and do them, that Jehovah thy God will keep with thee the covenant and the mercy which he swore unto thy fathers;
13 and he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee, and will bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy ground, thy corn and thy new wine, and thine oil, the offspring of thy kine, and the increase of thy sheep, in the land which he swore unto thy fathers to give thee.
14 Thou shalt be blessed above all the peoples; there shall not be male or female barren with thee, or with thy cattle;
15 and Jehovah will take away from thee all sickness, and none of the evil infirmities of Egypt, which thou knowest, will he put upon thee; but he will lay them upon all them that hate thee.
16 And thou shalt consume all the peoples that Jehovah thy God will give up unto thee; thine eye shall not spare them, and thou shalt not serve their gods; for that would be a snare unto thee.
17 If thou shouldest say in thy heart, These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?
18 fear them not; remember well what Jehovah thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all the Egyptians;
19 the great trials which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the powerful hand, and the stretched-out arm, whereby Jehovah thy God brought thee out: so will Jehovah thy God do unto all the peoples whom thou fearest.
20 Moreover, Jehovah thy God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and they that hide themselves from thee, are destroyed.
21 Thou shalt not be afraid of them; for Jehovah thy God is in thy midst, a ùGod great and terrible.
22 And Jehovah thy God will cast out those nations from before thee by little and little; thou shalt not be able to make an end of them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.
23 But Jehovah thy God will give them up before thee, and will confound them with great consternation, until they are destroyed.
24 And he will give their kings into thy hand, and thou shalt put out their name from under the heavens; no man shall stand before thee, until thou hast destroyed them.
25 The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire; thou shalt not covet the silver and gold [that is] on them and take it unto thee, lest thou be ensnared therein; for it is an abomination to Jehovah thy God.
26 And thou shalt not bring an abomination into thy house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Deuteronomy 7
Commentary on Deuteronomy 7 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 7
De 7:1-26. All Communion with the Nations Forbidden.
1. the Hittites—This people were descended from Heth, the second son of Canaan (Ge 10:15), and occupied the mountainous region about Hebron, in the south of Palestine.
the Girgashites—supposed by some to be the same as the Gergesenes (Mt 8:28), who lay to the east of Lake Gennesareth; but they are placed on the west of Jordan (Jos 24:11), and others take them for a branch of the large family of the Hivites, as they are omitted in nine out of ten places where the tribes of Canaan are enumerated; in the tenth they are mentioned, while the Hivites are not.
the Amorites—descended from the fourth son of Canaan. They occupied, besides their conquest on the Moabite territory, extensive settlements west of the Dead Sea, in the mountains.
the Canaanites—located in Phœnicia, particularly about Tyre and Sidon, and being sprung from the oldest branch of the family of Canaan, bore his name.
the Perizzites—that is, villagers, a tribe who were dispersed throughout the country and lived in unwalled towns.
the Hivites—who dwelt about Ebal and Gerizim, extending towards Hermon. They are supposed to be the same as the Avims.
the Jebusites—resided about Jerusalem and the adjacent country.
seven nations greater and mightier than thou—Ten were formerly mentioned (Ge 15:19-21). But in the lapse of near five hundred years, it cannot be surprising that some of them had been extinguished in the many intestine feuds that prevailed among those warlike tribes. It is more than probable that some, stationed on the east of Jordan, had fallen under the victorious arms of the Israelites.
2-6. thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them—This relentless doom of extermination which God denounced against those tribes of Canaan cannot be reconciled with the attributes of the divine character, except on the assumption that their gross idolatry and enormous wickedness left no reasonable hope of their repentance and amendment. If they were to be swept away like the antediluvians or the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, as incorrigible sinners who had filled up the measure of their iniquities, it mattered not to them in what way the judgment was inflicted; and God, as the Sovereign Disposer, had a right to employ any instruments that pleased Him for executing His judgments. Some think that they were to be exterminated as unprincipled usurpers of a country which God had assigned to the posterity of Eber and which had been occupied ages before by wandering shepherds of that race, till, on the migration of Jacob's family into Egypt through the pressure of famine, the Canaanites overspread the whole land, though they had no legitimate claim to it, and endeavored to retain possession of it by force. In this view their expulsion was just and proper. The strict prohibition against contracting any alliances with such infamous idolaters was a prudential rule, founded on the experience that "evil communications corrupt good manners" [1Co 15:33], and its importance or necessity was attested by the unhappy examples of Solomon and others in the subsequent history of Israel.
5. thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, &c.—The removal of the temples, altars, and everything that had been enlisted in the service, or might tend to perpetuate the remembrance, of Canaanite idolatry, was likewise highly expedient for preserving the Israelites from all risk of contamination. It was imitated by the Scottish Reformers, and although many ardent lovers of architecture and the fine arts have anathematized their proceedings as vandalism, yet there was profound wisdom in the favorite maxim of Knox—"pull down the nests, and the rooks will disappear."
6-10. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God—that is, set apart to the service of God, or chosen to execute the important purposes of His providence. Their selection to this high destiny was neither on account of their numerical amount (for, till after the death of Joseph, they were but a handful of people); nor because of their extraordinary merits (for they had often pursued a most perverse and unworthy conduct); but it was in consequence of the covenant or promise made with their pious forefathers; and the motives that led to that special act were such as tended not only to vindicate God's wisdom, but to illustrate His glory in diffusing the best and most precious blessings to all mankind.
11-26. Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I command thee this day—In the covenant into which God entered with Israel, He promised to bestow upon them a variety of blessings so long as they continued obedient to Him as their heavenly King. He pledged His veracity that His infinite perfections would be exerted for this purpose, as well as for delivering them from every evil to which, as a people, they would be exposed. That people accordingly were truly happy as a nation, and found every promise which the faithful God made to them amply fulfilled, so long as they adhered to that obedience which was required of them. See a beautiful illustration of this in Ps 144:12-15.
15. the evil diseases of Egypt—(See Ex 15:26). Besides those with which Pharaoh and his subjects were visited, Egypt has always been dreadfully scourged with diseases. The testimony of Moses is confirmed by the reports of many modern writers, who tell us that, notwithstanding its equal temperature and sereneness, that country has some indigenous maladies which are very malignant, such as ophthalmia, dysentery, smallpox, and the plague.
20. Moreover the Lord thy God will send the hornet among them—(See on Jos 24:12 [and Ex 23:28]).
22. lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee—(See on Ex 23:29). The omnipotence of their Almighty Ruler could have given them possession of the promised land at once. But, the unburied corpses of the enemy and the portions of the country that might have been left desolate for a while, would have drawn an influx of dangerous beasts. This evil would be prevented by a progressive conquest and by the use of ordinary means, which God would bless.