A Chosen People^(A)

7 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to ^(B)possess, and has cast out many ^(C)nations before you, ^(D)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 you, ² and when the Lord your God delivers ^(E)them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. ^(F)You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. ^3 (G)Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. ⁴ For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; ^(H)so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. ⁵ But thus you shall deal with them: you shall ^(I)destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their ^[a]wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.

⁶ “For you are a ^[b]holy people to the Lord your God; ^(J)the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. ⁷ The Lord did not set His ^(K)love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were ^(L)the least of all peoples; ⁸ but ^(M)because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep ^(N)the oath which He swore to your fathers, ^(O)the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of ^[c]bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

⁹ “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, ^(P)the faithful God ^(Q)who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; ¹⁰ and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not ^[d]be ^(R)slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. ¹¹ Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.

Blessings of Obedience^(S)

¹² “Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers.