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. ⁵ But thus you shall deal with them: you shall ^(I)destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their ^[a]wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.

⁶ “For you are a ^[b]holy people to the Lord your God; ^(J)the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. ⁷ The Lord did not set His ^(K)love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were ^(L)the least of all peoples; ⁸ but ^(M)because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep ^(N)the oath which He swore to your fathers, ^(O)the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of ^[c]bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

⁹ “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, ^(P)the faithful God ^(Q)who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; ¹⁰ and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not ^[d]be ^(R)slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. ¹¹ Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.

Blessings of Obedience^(S)

¹² “Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers. ¹³ And He will ^(T)love you and bless you and ^[e]multiply you; ^(U)He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He ^[f]swore to your fathers to give you. ¹⁴ You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female ^(V)barren among you or among your livestock. ¹⁵ And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the ^(W)terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you. ¹⁶ Also you shall ^[g]destroy all the peoples whom the Lord your God delivers over to you; your eye shall have no pity on them; nor shall you serve their gods, for that will ^(X)be a snare to you.

¹⁷ “If you should say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’— ¹⁸ you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall ^(Y)remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: ^19 (Z)the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out. So shall the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ^20 (AA)Moreover the Lord your God will send the hornet among them until those who are left, who hide themselves from you, are destroyed. ²¹ You shall not be terrified of them; for the Lord your God, the great and awesome God, is among you. ²² And the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you ^(AB)little by little; you will be unable to ^[h]destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. ²³ But the Lord your God will deliver them over to you, and will inflict defeat upon them until they are destroyed. ²⁴ And ^(AC)He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you will destroy their name from under heaven; ^(AD)no one shall be able to stand ^[i]against you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not ^(AE)covet^[j] the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. ²⁶ Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, ^(AF)for it is an ^[k]accursed thing.

Remember the Lord Your God

8 “Every commandment which I command you today ^(AG)you must ^[l]be careful to observe, that you may live and ^(AH)multiply,^[m] and go in and possess the land of which the Lord ^[n]swore to your fathers. ² And you shall remember that the Lord your God ^(AI)led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and ^(AJ)test you, ^(AK)to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. ³ So He humbled you, ^(AL)allowed you to hunger, and ^(AM)fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall ^(AN)not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. ^4 (AO)Your garments did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. ^5 (AP)You should ^[o]know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you.

⁶ “Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, ^(AQ)to walk in His ways and to fear Him. ⁷ For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, ^(AR)a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. ^10 (AS)When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.

¹¹ “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, ^12 (AT)lest—when you have eaten and are ^[p]full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; ¹³ and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are ^[q]multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; ^14 (AU)when your heart ^[r]is lifted up, and you ^(AV)forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; ¹⁵ who ^(AW)led you through that great and terrible wilderness, ^(AX)in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; ^(AY)who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; ¹⁶ who fed you in the wilderness with ^(AZ)manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, ^(BA)to do you good in the end— ¹⁷ then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’

¹⁸ “And you shall remember the Lord your God, ^(BB)for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, ^(BC)that He may ^[s]establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. ¹⁹ Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, ^(BD)I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. ²⁰ As the nations which the Lord destroys before you, ^(BE)so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God.

⁷ So He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, there was a hole in the wall. ⁸ Then He said to me, “Son of man, dig into the wall”; and when I dug into the wall, there was a door.

⁹ And He said to me, “Go in, and see the wicked abominations which they are doing there.” ¹⁰ So I went in and saw, and there—every ^(A)sort of ^(B)creeping thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, ^[a]portrayed all around on the walls. ¹¹ And there stood before them ^(C)seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in their midst stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan. Each man had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up. ¹² Then He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, ^(D)‘The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land.’ ”

¹³ And He said to me, “Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.” ¹⁴ So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the Lord’s house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for ^[b]Tammuz.

¹⁵ Then He said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Turn again, you will see greater abominations than these.” ¹⁶ So He brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house; and there, at the door of the temple of the Lord, ^(E)between the porch and the altar, ^(F)were about twenty-five men ^(G)with their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping ^(H)the sun toward the east.

¹⁷ And He said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have ^(I)filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke Me to anger. Indeed they put the branch to their nose. ^18 (J)Therefore I also will act in fury. My ^(K)eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they ^(L)cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.”