seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Deuteronomy 7:1 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girga####es, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.[a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles(b) and burn their idols in the fire. 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 the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
a. Deuteronomy 7:2 The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them; also in verse 26.
b. Deuteronomy 7:5 That is, wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah; here and elsewhere in Deuteronomy
This is from the easy English site.
Moses told the Israelites what to do when they entered the country. The nations in the list did not obey God. They lived in the country that God was now giving to the Israelites. They gave honour to false gods. Those nations were more powerful than the Israelites, but they were not more powerful than God. God ordered the Israelites to destroy their enemies. Then their enemies could not tempt them to worship idols. This was a war that would bring punishment on the enemies of God. The Israelites must not make agreements with those nations or marry them. When the Israelites did not obey, they did not follow God. We can learn from the lives of Achan, (Joshua chapter 7) and Saul (1 Samuel chapter 15). We can see the results when the Israelites did not destroy their enemies. The Asherah was a female false god. Her husband was the false god called Baal. People who joined this religion behaved very badly. This bad behaviour, especially in the ways that they had sex, had a physical effect on them.
God does not give any reason why he chose the Israelites as his special nation. They were not a large nation. God loved them just because he loved them! In Hosea 14:4, God says this. ‘I will love them freely.’ He rescued them from Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. And that showed that he loved them. So, the Israelites should obey God’s commandments. That would show that they were grateful to him.
But the Israelites were God’s special people. They had to be *holy because God was holy.
God does not give any reason why he chose the Israelites as his special nation. They were not a large nation. God loved them just because he loved them! In Hosea 14:4, God says this. ‘I will love them freely.’ He rescued them from Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. And that showed that he loved them. So, the Israelites should obey God’s commandments. That would show that they were grateful to him.
I got this from yet another site called bibleteachingnotes.com.
Deuteronomy 7 contains Moses' instructions to the Israelites concerning their relationship to the other nations in Canaan, described as "seven nations greater and stronger than you". These nations posed a spiritual and moral threat to the Israelites. The Israelites were forbidden from making any covenant or alliance with these foreign nations . The making of a covenant or contract would have required that each party take an oath in the name of their respective deity. Included in the prohibition against covenant making with the inhabitants of Canaan was the marriage covenant. The Israelites were prohibited from intermarrying with their pagan neighbors . The reason for this prohibition is given in verse 4: "For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods." The danger of apostasy was a real threat. The consequences of Solomon's intermarriage with foreign women in 1 Kings 11:1-13 proves the necessity and importance of this policy. John Maxwell comments, "If a child of God marries a child of the devil, the child of God is going to have trouble with the father-in-law!" Moses also instructed the Israelites to utterly destroy everything associated with idolatry . They were to destroy every appearance of evil. God would tolerate no rival or anything that would perpetuate idolatry.
Back when I was a kid, in the early 60's, the theme in Bible Study was separation of churches. A Christian and a Jew should not marry. A Protestant and a Catholic should not marry. A Baptist Protestant should not marry another someone from another Protestant faith [i.e. a Methodist from the church down the street]. The reason.... the family would be divided. Now that I look back, life would have been so much different had I listened. I married a man with no faith the first time. I had three children in that marriage. The family is definitely dysfunctional and very divided.
God was dealing with a Nation. He wanted a strong nation. He wanted a unified nation that relied on God alone for its strength. So.... He would drive out the current inhabitants and bring in His own nation of people. He had rescued these people from slavery and now He was giving them a wonderful place to live.
