1When the Lord your God takes you into the land where you are going, which is to be your heritage, and has sent out the 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 stronger than you; 2And when the Lord has given them up into your hands and you have overcome them, give them up to complete destruction: make no agreement with them, and have no mercy on them: 3Do not take wives or husbands from among them; do not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons. 4For through them your sons will be turned from me to the worship of other gods: and the Lord will be moved to wrath against you and send destruction on you quickly. 5But this is what you are to do to them: their altars are to be pulled down and their pillars broken, and their holy trees cut down and their images burned with fire. 6For you are a holy people to the Lord your God: marked out by the Lord your God to be his special people out of all the nations on the face of the earth. 7The Lord did not give you his love or take you for himself because you were more in number than any other people; for you were the smallest of the nations: 8But because of his love for you, and in order to keep his oath to your fathers, the Lord took you out with the strength of his hand, making you free from the prison-house and from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. 9Be certain, then, that the Lord your God is God; whose faith and mercy are unchanging, who keeps his word through a thousand generations to those who have love for him and keep his laws; 10Rewarding his haters to their face with destruction; he will have no mercy on his hater, but will give him open punishment. 11So keep the orders and the laws and the decisions which I give you today and do them. 12And it will be, that if you give attention to these decisions and keep and do them, then the Lord will keep his agreement with you and his mercy, as he said in his oath to your fathers. 13And he will give you his love, blessing you and increasing you: he will send his blessing on the offspring of your body and the fruit of your land, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the young of your flock, in the land which by his oath to your fathers he undertook to give you. 14You will have greater blessings than any other people: no male or female among you or among your cattle will be without offspring. 15And the Lord will take away from you all disease, and will not put on you any of the evil diseases of Egypt which you have seen, but will put them on your haters. 16And you are to send destruction on all the peoples which the Lord your God gives into your hands; have no pity on them, and do not give worship to their gods; for that will be a cause of sin to you. 17If you say in your hearts, These nations are greater in number than we are: how are we to take their land from them? 18Have no fear of them, but keep well in mind what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt; 19The great punishments which your eyes saw, and the signs and the wonders and the strong hand and the stretched-out arm, by which the Lord your God took you out: so will the Lord your God do to all the peoples who are the cause of your fears. 20And the Lord will send a hornet among them, till all the rest who have kept themselves safe from you in secret places have been cut off. 21Have no fear of them: for the Lord your God is with you, a great God greatly to be feared. 22The Lord your God will send out the nations before you little by little; they are not to be rooted out quickly, for fear that the beasts of the field may be increased overmuch against you. 23But the Lord your God will give them up into your hands, overpowering them till their destruction is complete. 24He will give their kings into your hands, and you will put their names out of existence under heaven; there is not one of them who will not give way before you, till their destruction is complete. 25The images of their gods are to be burned with fire: have no desire for the gold and silver on them, and do not take it for yourselves, for it will be a danger to you: it is a thing disgusting to the Lord your God: 26And you may not take a disgusting thing into your house, and so become cursed with its curse: but keep yourselves from it, turning from it with fear and hate, for it is a cursed thing.
Matthew Henry's Commentary
Intercourse with the Canaanites forbidden. (1-11) Promises if they were obedient. (12-26) 1-11 Here is a strict caution against all friendship and fellowship with idols and idolaters. Those who are in communion with God, must have no communication with the unfruitful works of darkness. Limiting the orders to destroy, to the nations here mentioned, plainly shows that after ages were not to draw this into a precedent. A proper understanding of the evil of sin, and of the mystery of a crucified Saviour, will enable us to perceive the justice of God in all his punishments, temporal and eternal. We must deal decidedly with our lusts that war against our souls; let us not show them any mercy, but mortify, and crucify, and utterly destroy them. Thousands in the world that now is, have been undone by ungodly marriages; for there is more likelihood that the good will be perverted, than that the bad will be converted. Those who, in choosing yoke-fellows, keep not within the bounds of a profession of religion, cannot promise themselves helps meet for them. 12-26 We are in danger of having fellowship with the works of darkness if we take pleasure in fellowship with those who do such works. Whatever brings us into a snare, brings us under a curse. Let us be constant to our duty, and we cannot question the constancy of God's mercy. Diseases are God's servants; they go where he sends them, and do what he bids them. It is therefore good for the health of our bodies, thoroughly to mortify the sin of our souls; which is our rule of duty. Yet sin is never totally destroyed in this world; and it actually prevails in us much more than it would do, if we were watchful and diligent. In all this the Lord acts according to the counsel of his own will; but that counsel being hid from us, forms no excuse for our sloth and negligence, of which it is in no degree the cause. We must not think, that because the deliverance of the church, and the destruction of the enemies of the soul, are not done immediately, therefore they will never be done. God will do his own work in his own method and time; and we may be sure that they are always the best. Thus corruption is driven out of the hearts of believers by little and little. The work of sanctification is carried on gradually; but at length there will be a complete victory. Pride, security, and other sins that are common effects of prosperity, are enemies more dangerous than beasts of the field, and more apt to increase upon us.