13. He will love you and bless you. He will make your nation grow. He will bless your children. He will bless your fields with good crops and will give you grain, new wine, and oil. He will bless your cows with calves and your sheep with lambs. You will have all these blessings in the land that he promised your ancestors to give you.
14. “You will be blessed more than all people. Every husband and wife will be able to have children. Your cows will be able to have calves.
15. The Lord will take away all sickness from you and he will not let you catch any of the terrible diseases that you had in Egypt. But he will make your enemies catch those diseases.
16. You must destroy all the people the Lord your God helps you defeat. Don’t feel sorry for them, and don’t worship their gods! They will trap you—they will ruin your life.
17. “Don’t say in your heart, ‘These nations are stronger than we are. How can we force them out?’
18. You must not be afraid of them. You must remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all the people of Egypt.
19. You saw the great troubles he gave them and the amazing things he did. You saw the Lord use his great power and strength to bring you out of Egypt. The Lord your God will use that same power against all the people you fear.
20. “The Lord your God will send the hornet against them. He will do this until he destroys all the people who escaped and tried to hide.
21. Don’t be afraid of them, because the Lord your God is with you. He is a great and awesome God.
22. The Lord your God will force those nations to leave your country little by little. You will not destroy them all at once. If you did, the wild animals would grow to be too many for you.
23. But the Lord your God will let you defeat those nations. He will confuse them in battle, until they are destroyed.
24. He will help you defeat their kings. You will kill them, and the world will forget they ever lived. No one will be able to stop you. You will destroy them all!
25. “You must throw the statues of their gods into the fire and burn them. You must not want to keep the silver or the gold that is on those statues for yourselves. It will be like a trap to you—it will ruin your life. The Lord your God hates those idols.
26. You must not bring any of those disgusting idols into your homes, or you will be destroyed just as they will be. You must treat them as the disgusting things they are! They are to be destroyed.