Driving Out Idolatrous Nations

1When YHWH your God brings you into the land where you go to possess it, and casts out many nations before you—the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite—seven nations greater and mightier than you; 2and when YHWH your God delivers them up before you, and you strike them, then must destroy-destroy them. You are not to make a covenant with them or show mercy to them. 3You must not make marriages with them. You must not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4For they will turn away your sons from me to serve other gods. So YHWH’s anger would burn against y’all, and ʜᴇ would destroy y’all quickly. 5Instead this is what y’all are to do with them: y’all must break down their altars, dash their pillars into pieces, cut down their Asherah poles, and y’all must burn their idols with fire. 6For you are a holy people to YHWH your God. YHWH your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7YHWH favored y’all and choose y’all, not because y’all were great in number than any people, for y’all were the fewest of all peoples, 8but because YHWH loves y’all, and kept the oath which ʜᴇ swore to y’all’s ancestors, YHWH has brought y’all out with a mighty hand and redeemed y’all out of the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9Know therefore that YHWH your God is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness to a thousand generations with those who love ʜɪᴍ and keep ʜɪꜱ commandments, 10and repays those who hate ʜɪᴍ to their face, to destroy them. Hᴇ will not be slow to the one who hates ʜɪᴍ. Hᴇ will repay him to his face. 11Therefore, you must keep the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances which I command you today, to do them. 12If y’all listen to these ordinances and are keep doing them, YHWH your God will keep the covenant with you and the loving kindness which ʜᴇ swore to your ancestors. 13Hᴇ will love you, bless you, and multiply you. Hᴇ 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 livestock and the young of your flock, in the land which he swore to your ancestors to give you. 14You will be blessed above all peoples. There won’t be male or female barren among you, or among your livestock. 15YHWH will take all sickness away from you, and ʜᴇ will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you know, on you, but will lay them on all those who hate you. 16You must destroy all the peoples whom YHWH your God will deliver to you. Your eye must not pity them. You must not serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you. 17If you say in your heart, “These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?” 18you are not to be afraid of them. Instead, you must remember-remember what YHWH your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: 19the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which YHWH your God brought you out. So YHWH your God will do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20Moreover YHWH your God will send the hornet among them, until those who are left, and hide themselves, perish from before you. 21You must not be terrified of them, because YHWH your God is among you, a great and awesome God. 22YHWH your God will cast out those nations before you little by little. You will not be allowed to destroy them at once, otherwise the animals of the field would multiply around you. 23But YHWH your God will deliver them up before you, and will confuse them with a great confusion, until they are destroyed. 24Hᴇ will deliver their kings into your hand, and you are to make their name vanish from under the sky. No one will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them. 25Y’all must burn the idol of their gods with fire. Do not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourself, so that you are not snared in it, for it is an abomination to YHWH your God. 26You must not bring an abomination into your house and become a devoted thing like it. You must detest-detest it. You must abhor-abhor it, for it is set apart for this.