Deuteronomy 7
You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them
In Deuteronomy 7, Moses gives the people instruction on entering the land, to destroy the nations completely that they come into contact with and to not fear them. He also reminds the people that YAHWEH loves them and choose them as his own, therefore they should be careful to obey his commands.
Bible Passage:
7:1 When YAHWEH your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before you, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than you; 2 and when YAHWEH your God shall deliver them up before you, and you shall smite them; then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them; 3 nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor his daughter shall you take for your son. 4 For he will turn away your son from following me, that they may serve other gods. So the anger of YAHWEH will be kindled against you, and he will destroy you quickly. 5 But you shall deal with them thus: you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire.
6 For you are a holy people to YAHWEH your God. YAHWEH your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth. 7 YAHWEH did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more numerous than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But because YAHWEH loves you, and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, YAHWEH has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that YAHWEH your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and lovingkindness with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations. 10 And he repays them that hate him to their face, to destroy them. He will not tarry for him that hates him; he will repay him to his face. 11 You shall therefore keep the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which I command you this day, to do them.
12 And it shall come to pass, because you listen to these ordinances, and keep and do them, that YAHWEH your God will keep with you the covenant and the lovingkindness which he swore to your fathers. 13 He will love you, and bless you, and multiply you; he will also bless the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock, in the land which he swore to your fathers to give you. 14 You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle. 15 And YAHWEH will take away from you all sickness; and he will put upon you none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you know, but will lay them upon all them that hate you. 16 And you shall consume all the peoples that YAHWEH your God shall deliver to you. Your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods; for that will be a snare to you.
17 If you shall say in your heart, ‘These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them?’ 18 You shall not be afraid of them. You shall well remember what YAHWEH your God did to Pharaoh, and to all Egypt; 19 the great trials which your eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, with which YAHWEH your God brought you out. So shall YAHWEH your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20 Moreover, YAHWEH your God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left hide themselves, and perish from before you. 21 You shall not be afraid of them; for YAHWEH your God is in the midst of you, a great and dreadful God. 22 And YAHWEH your God will cast out those nations before you little by little. You may not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon you. 23 But YAHWEH your God will deliver them up before you, and will confound them with a great tumult, until they are destroyed. 24 And he will deliver their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. There shall be no man able to stand before you, until you have destroyed them. 25 The graven images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it to you, lest you be snared with it; for it is an abomination to YAHWEH your God. 26 And you shall not bring an abomination into your house, and become devoted for destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it, and you shall utterly abhor it; for it is a thing devoted for destruction.
Reflection:
It’s hard to imagine the fear the people must have felt as they were preparing to enter the land. Obviously, YAHWEH had told them not to fear and therefore, they knew that their God would be with them and win the battle for them, but we breeze past this too quickly. Firstly, just the fear of going into battle period, knowing it may cost you your life. But now also recognize, that the people you are trying to attack and defeat have every human advantage possible. They are entrenched in their positions and have walls to protect their cities. They know the land for the best routes and positions to attack enemies from. They are likely more equipped and experienced in war. The Israelites have had little battle training and were slaves just prior to this generation. But they have the only thing they need, YAHWEH their God fighting for them.
Questions and Answers:
Verse 4: Why would the sons of Israel turn away from YAHWEH rather than the other nation’s people turn to serving YAHWEH? [Gwendolyn, 9]
This goes back to the significance of what happens in Genesis 3. The fall of humanity broke us utterly. We are bent towards desiring evil after the fall of Adam and Eve. Because this is the case, rather than the other nations turning towards YAHWEH and accepting him as Creator and Judge, Israel would turn towards evil and the gods of the other nations. This is a short explanation of a very big and important theological topic, but that is the essence of it. Man has become sinful by nature because of the fall and the active pursuing of evil makes a person more depraved. We could talk a lot more about the doctrine of man’s sinfulness, but I think I will just give you a few passages that help us examine why man would pursue evil. They both come from Paul.
In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul is talking about his ministry of preaching the gospel. In the course of talking about preaching the gospel, he mentions why it is that the unbelieving would not respond to a message that is so good and so beautiful. His answer is that the “god of this age,” meaning Satan, has blinded their minds to the light of the gospel. They are under the power of their god, and therefore, they cannot ascertain the beauty and goodness of the gospel he is preaching.
In Romans 1, he speaks of a different reason why people aren’t responding to the gospel, and why humans corrupted themselves. He says that it was evident to mankind that YAHWEH was God, but they did not honor him as God. Then they exchanged the glory of YAHWEH for an idol that was in the form of created things. In other words, they chose to not honor God, and they chose to worship the created thing instead of the Creator.
These two reasons are not opposed to one another, they are both paradoxically true. This explains the two main reasons that people would not respond to serve YAHWEH in this passage, as well as why they wouldn’t respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ today. They are under the power of Satan, who has blinded them to the truth, and they willingly chose evil because their hearts were dark. There is both a victim aspect and a depraved aspect to people’s bondage to sin. The Bible will address both aspects in different passages and focus on one or the other often. But theologically, both are true and they need to be held in tension.
Verses 7-8: I love God’s faithfulness to Israel. [Monique, 33]
Yeah, it is incredible that it is not based on anything related to the nation of Israel. This is where the concept of election is very clear as it relates to YAHWEH choosing who his people would be. There was nothing within them that caused him to choose them. It wasn’t because they were the largest people, which it says right here. In Deuteronomy 9, he also says he’s not giving them the land because they were righteous, for they have done nothing but be rebellious to him since the day they left Egypt. His faithfulness according to this passage is based on two things.
One, because he loves this people. There is no discernible reason for his great love for Israel, simply his divine choice of them. If there was a specific reason, God does not reveal it in the Scriptures. Two, his commitment to the promises he made to the patriarchs. He is the God who stays true to his word. The promise he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he will fulfill. So, the faithful God will bring his promises to pass in spite of how his people operate. He cannot help but be faithful, because it is innate to his character.
Verse 14: Why does it say “male or female barren”? [Gwendolyn, 9]
It says “male or female barren,” because both men and women can be infertile or sterile. For a long time, I thought sterility related to men, and infertility to women, but that’s not the case. In terms of medical definition, sterility means there is no possible way for the man or woman to produce what is necessary for children. So if a woman had cancer and had her uterus removed, she would be sterile. If a man was a eunuch, he would be sterile. Infertility means that there is a problem with conception, but it could be altered with medical intervention. If hormone changes or fertility drugs could help, then the person is infertile, not sterile.
Since there are two components to creating a new human being, the seed and the egg, there can also be problems from either the male or the female respectively. So the text here is just referring to the fact that there could be problems with either the man or the woman. What this verse is saying is that God will bless the people and remove barrenness if they are faithful and obedient.
Recording of the Passage:
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