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.

¹⁰ “When you go near a city to fight against it, ^(A)then proclaim an offer of peace to it. ¹¹ And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace, and open to you, then all the people who are found in it shall be placed under tribute to you, and serve you. ¹² Now if the city will not make peace with you, but war against you, then you shall besiege it. ¹³ And when the Lord your God delivers it into your hands, ^(B)you shall strike every male in it with the edge of the sword. ¹⁴ But the women, the little ones, ^(C)the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself; and ^(D)you shall eat the enemies’ plunder which the Lord your God gives you. ¹⁵ Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.

¹⁶ “But ^(E)of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, ¹⁷ but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you,