Deuteronomy 7:5-7
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
5 But this is how you must deal with them:(A) Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, chop down their asherahs,[a] and destroy their idols by fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord, your God; the Lord, your God, has chosen you from all the peoples on the face of the earth to be a people specially his own.(B) 7 It was not because you are more numerous than all the peoples that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you; for you are really the smallest of all peoples.(C)
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- 7:5 Sacred pillars…asherahs: cut or uncut stones and wooden poles or trees (cf. 16:21) that had some cultic function. Fairly common religious artifacts, their association with the non-Israelite cults of Canaan and perhaps with Canaanite gods and goddesses, specifically the goddess Asherah, led to their condemnation in the Deuteronomic reform and possibly earlier.
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