⁴⁰ So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings; he left no one remaining but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel had commanded.^(A)

² and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.^{(A) 3} Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,^{(B) 4} for that would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.^{(C) 5} But this is how you must deal with them: break down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles,^[a] and burn their idols with fire.^{(D) 6} For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.^(E)

⁷ “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.^{(F) 8} It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors 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.^{(G) 9} Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,^{(H) 10} and who repays in their own person those who reject him. He does not delay but repays in their own person those who reject him. ¹¹ Therefore, observe diligently the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that I am commanding you today.

Blessings for Obedience

¹² “If you heed these ordinances by diligently observing them, the Lord your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that he swore to your ancestors;^{(I) 13} he will love you, bless you, and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, in the land that he swore to your ancestors to give you.^{(J) 14} You shall be the most blessed of peoples, with neither sterility nor barrenness among you or your livestock.^{(K) 15} The Lord will turn away from you every illness; all the dread diseases of Egypt that you experienced, he will not inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you.^{(L) 16} You shall devour all the peoples that the Lord your God is giving over to you, showing them no pity; you shall not serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.^(M)

⁷ and to give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels^{(A) 8} in a fiery flame, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.^{(B) 9} These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,^(C)

²⁹ As soon as he was king, he killed all the house of Jeroboam; he left to the house of Jeroboam not one who breathed, until he had destroyed it, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by his servant Ahijah the Shilonite^(A)—