^4 (A)“Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is ^(B)because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you.

¹⁷ Beware ^(A)lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’

Abominable Practices

⁹ “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, ^(A)you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. ¹⁰ There shall not be found among you anyone ^(B)who burns his son or his daughter as an offering,^[a] anyone who ^(C)practices divination or ^(D)tells fortunes or interprets omens, or ^(E)a sorcerer ¹¹ or a charmer or ^(F)a medium or a necromancer or ^(G)one who inquires of the dead, ^12 (H)for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And ^(I)because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. ¹³ You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, ¹⁴ for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

^5 (A)Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm ^(B)the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

^9 (A)who saved us and ^(B)called us to^[a] a holy calling, ^(C)not because of our works but because of ^(D)his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus ^(E)before the ages began,^[b]

⁷ For who sees anything different in you? ^(A)What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

^24 (A)“Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, ^(B)for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, ²⁵ and the ^(C)land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land ^(D)vomited out its inhabitants. ²⁶ But ^(E)you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the ^(F)native or the stranger who sojourns among you ²⁷ (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), ²⁸ lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. ²⁹ For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people. ^30 (G)So keep my charge never to practice ^(H)any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them: ^(I)I am the Lord your God.”

^31 (A)You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every ^(B)abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for ^(C)they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.

⁷ It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, ⁸ but ^(A)it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping ^(B)the oath that he swore to your fathers, 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.