Deuteronomy 7:1-11

When the Lord your God brings you into the land¹ that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you—the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you²— and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them.³ Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.⁴ Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for that would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods.⁵ Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.⁶ But this is how you must deal with them: break down their altars, smash their pillars, hew down their sacred poles, and burn their idols with fire.⁷ For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.”⁸

“It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples.⁹ It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors,¹⁰ that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments,¹¹ to a thousand generations, and who repays in their own person those who reject him.¹² He does not delay but repays in their own person those who reject him. Therefore, observe diligently the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that I am commanding you today.”¹³

1 God will do it, not them.

2 Builds up that Israel could never do this task alone

3 Doesn't mince words. In history, these other nations were never destroyed and Israel had to learn coexistence with them.

4 “No covenant” and “no mercy” make me sad. The spiritual understanding of not compromising on following God is clear, but the potential for all sort of misuse seems so high.

5 As they already had a problem with.

6 Obedience to God in Deuteronomy is commanded out of fear of God, judgement, and death

7 The anger is directed towards their foreign forms of worship.

8 God chose them – they did nothing.

9 They should not think that they were great.

10 Again God's love started things, they did nothing on their own.

11 Again goes back to keeping his commandments.

12 Again judgement to those who reject Him.

13 Yet another reiteration of the order to keep his commandments.

Take-home: The Israelites are reminded that they did nothing to deserve God's love. But now that they have it, they must follow his commandments, reject foreign gods, and trust him to clear out the land by their hand, or reject him and face destruction.