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.
For Jehovah thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; and thy camp shall be holy, that he see nothing unseemly with thee, and turn away from thee.
and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.' But you have not obeyed my command. What is this you have done?
And the men said to her, Our lives shall pay for yours, if ye do not make this our business known; and it shall be when Jehovah shall give us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with thee.
But of the cities of these peoples which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, but shalt utterly devote them to destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee;
Notwithstanding, no devoted thing that a man hath devoted to Jehovah of all that he hath, of man or beast, or of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy to Jehovah. Nothing devoted, which shall be devoted from among men, shall be ransomed: it shall certainly be put to death.
Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me; for if thou serve their gods, it is sure to be a snare unto thee.
And Jehovah gave it also and the king thereof into the hand of Israel; and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein; he let none remain in it: and he did to the king thereof as he had done to the king of Jericho.
And the king called the Gibeonites, and spoke to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remainder of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn to them; and Saul sought to smite them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah.)
Then Judah went up and the LORD gave the Canaanites and the Per'izzites into their hand; and they defeated ten thousand of them at Bezek.
And Jehovah gave them rest round about, according to all that he had sworn unto their fathers; and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them: Jehovah gave all their enemies into their hand.
And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, destroying them utterly: there was not any left to breathe; and he burned Hazor with fire. And all the cities of those kings and all their kings did Joshua take; and he smote them with the edge of the sword, destroying them utterly, as Moses the servant of Jehovah had commanded.
and all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time; for Jehovah the God of Israel fought for Israel.
And Joshua smote the whole country, the mountain, and the south, and the lowland, and the hill-slopes, and all their kings: he let none remain, but he utterly destroyed all that breathed, as Jehovah the God of Israel had commanded.
And Joshua took Makkedah on that day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, him and all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed; he let none remain; and he did to the king of Makkedah as he had done to the king of Jericho.
And it came to pass when they had brought forth those kings to Joshua, that Joshua called to all the men of Israel, and said to the captains of the men of war who went with him, Come forward, put your feet on the necks of these kings. And they came forward and put their feet on their necks. And Joshua said to them, Fear not, neither be dismayed; be strong and courageous, for thus will Jehovah do to all your enemies against whom ye fight.
And they answered Joshua and said, Because it was certainly told thy servants how that Jehovah thy God commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you; and we feared greatly for our lives because of you, and did this thing.
And the children of Israel did not smite them, because the princes of the assembly had sworn unto them by Jehovah the God of Israel. Then all the assembly murmured against the princes. And all the princes said to all the assembly, We have sworn unto them by Jehovah the God of Israel, and now we may not touch them. This we will do to them, and let them live, lest wrath come upon us, because of the oath which we swore unto them. And the princes said to them, Let them live. And they were hewers of wood and drawers of water for all the assembly; as the princes had said to them.
And it came to pass when Israel had ended slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they had chased them, and they had all fallen by the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all Israel returned to Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.
And the city shall be accursed, it and all that is in it, to Jehovah; only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent. But in any wise keep from the accursed thing, lest ye make [yourselves] accursed in taking of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it. And all the silver, and gold, and vessels of copper and iron, shall be holy to Jehovah; they shall come into the treasury of Jehovah. And the people shouted, and they blew with the trumpets. And it came to pass when the people heard the sound of the trumpets, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat; and the people went up into the city, each one straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city; both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. And Joshua said to the two men that had spied out the country, Go into the harlot's house and bring out thence the woman, and all that she has, as ye swore unto her. And the young men, the spies, went in and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she had: all her kindred did they bring out, and they left them outside the camp of Israel. And they burned the city with fire, and all that was therein; only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of copper and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of Jehovah. And Joshua saved alive Rahab the harlot, and her father's household, and all that she had, and she dwelt in the midst of Israel to this day; because she hid the messengers whom Joshua had sent to spy out Jericho.
When thou approachest unto a city to fight against it, thou shalt proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then all the people that are found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye spare him, neither shalt thou pity him, neither shalt thou screen him,
But Jehovah thy God will give them up before thee, and will confound them with great consternation, until they are destroyed. 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.
And Jehovah our God gave into our hand Og the king of Bashan also, and all his people; and we smote him until none was left to him remaining.
then ye shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and ye shall destroy all their figured images, and all their molten images shall ye destroy, and all their high places shall ye lay waste;
Take heed to thyself, that thou make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which thou shalt come, lest it be a snare in the midst of thee; but ye shall demolish their altars, shatter their statues, and hew down their Asherahs. For thou shalt worship no other ùGod; for Jehovah -- Jealous is his name -- is a jealous ùGod; lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and then, when they go a whoring after their gods, and sacrifice unto their gods, thou be invited, and eat of their sacrifice, and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.
And blessed be the Most High ùGod, who has delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him the tenth of all.
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.