Chapter Seven

The prohibition against the Israelites forming alliances or kinship relations with the peoples inhabiting the promised land — The fulfillment of the divine law as a condition of Israel’s blessed existence.

Deuteronomy 7:1. When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you — the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites — seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, Deuteronomy 7:2. and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to destruction; you shall make no covenant with them and show them no mercy. Deuteronomy 7:3. You shall not intermarry with them: you shall not give your daughter to his son, nor take his daughter for your son. Deuteronomy 7:4. For they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods, and then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. The reason for the merciless destruction of the Canaanites during the conquest of Canaan, and the prohibition of forming alliances or family ties with them after the conquest, is clearly stated in the fourth verse of this chapter.

Deuteronomy 7:5. But you shall deal with them in this way: you shall break down their altars and smash their pillars, and chop down their groves, and burn their carved images [of their gods] with fire. To prevent being drawn into paganism.

Deuteronomy 7:7. It was not because you were more numerous than all the peoples that the Lord chose you and accepted you — for you are the fewest of all peoples — Compared with the powerful nations of the ancient world, Israel must indeed be called “few in number.” But compared with what it was at the time of the patriarchal family’s migration to Egypt, it had truly multiplied “like the stars of heaven” (Deut 1:10).

Deuteronomy 7:22. And the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you little by little. You will not be able to destroy them all at once, lest [the land become desolate and] wild animals multiply against you. Cf. Exod 23:29. An instance of the multiplication of wild beasts after the rapid mass exodus of a country’s inhabitants is recorded in 2 Sam 17:24-26.