1. “When Yahweh your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter into it to take possession of it, and he drives out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you,
2. and Yahweh your God will give them over to you and you defeat them, you must utterly destroy them; you shall not make a covenant with them, and you shall not show mercy to them.
3. And you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to their son; and you shall not take his daughter for your son.
4. For their sons and daughters will cause your son to turn away from following me, and so they will serve other gods, and the anger of Yahweh would be kindled against you, and he would quickly destroy you.
5. But this is what you must do to them: you shall break down their altars, and their stone pillars you shall smash, and their Asherah poles you shall hew down, and you shall burn their idols with fire.
6. For you are a holy people for Yahweh your God; Yahweh your God has chosen you to be for him a people, a treasured possession from among all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.
7. “Yahweh loved you and chose you not because of your great number exceeding all other peoples, for you are fewer than all of the peoples,
8. but because of the love of Yahweh for you and because of his keeping of the sworn oath that he swore to your ancestors, Yahweh brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.
9. So know that Yahweh your God, he is God, the trustworthy God, maintaining his covenant and his loyal love with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments to a thousand generations,