The Chosen People

7 When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to possess and has driven out many nations before you, 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 them before you and you strike them down, then you must utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. ³ What is more, you shall not intermarry with them. You shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. ⁴ For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will be inflamed against you, and He will quickly destroy you. ⁵ But this is how you shall deal with them: You shall destroy their altars and break down their images and cut down their Asherim^[a] and burn their graven images with fire. ⁶ For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be His special people, treasured above all peoples who are on the face of the earth.