Chapter 7
Instructions as to how they are to deal with the nations they are about to conquer.
2025 - Note 7:1 b: "...seven nations greater and stronger than you." Israel had 600,000 fighting men. Does it mean that EACH of the seven had more than that, or does it mean that all of them combined had more than that. I am not sure there are 4.2 million people in that region even today. Gaza has over 2 million at a very high (previously anyway) population density. Imagine the productivity of the land at that time if it could have supported so many people in an entirely non-technological age.
This verse:
2 and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. [Deu 7:2 ESV]
There is no wiggle room here. They were not to be merciful, compassionate, or empathetic. God had already judged those to be conquered and found them worthy of death, not mercy. They had run out of chances. Just as in the future, Israel would also run out of chances. It was not Israel that judged these nations and decided to wipe them out, it was God that judged. To do other than God commanded is what would be "wrong".
But right after, you get this:
3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, [Deu 7:3 ESV]
If all those people were to be killed, then there wouldn't be anyone left to intermarry. So this implies that they were to be destroyed as nations, kings deposed, property taken, they were to be relieved of all their worldly goods, and in many cases they were to be killed. BUT, vs 3 acknowledges that they will not all be killed. This was not complete genocide. This was about nations, not about individuals. We are in the Sinai covenant age, where God deals with nations, not with individuals as with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is a new thing, a stark contrast to what has gone before.
Possible FB post. I think a lot of people wonder how to explain God's orders to kill so many people.
2025 - Their religions were to be totally destroyed when their nations were conquered. Today, the under the New Covenant, it does not work that way. The NC is not to be advanced by force. It is offered, not required.
It was always in a battle against an army, or the siege of a city where God required complete annihilation of the inhabitants or of the army. The small towns, unfortified cities were often not taken at all. Those people just scattered when the fortress cities fell. Maybe it is these that they aren't to intermarry with.
The reason that they are not to intermarry is also given. Because if they do, the foreign spouses will worship their own gods, the gods of those former nations, and sway the Israelites to do the same.
And here, a final instruction on how to devote them to destruction:
5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire. [Deu 7:5 ESV]
2021 - Reading this again today, I don't know why I ever thought that God had ordered the death of every single person anywhere in Canaan. It is nations that are devoted to destruction. There are just too many other injunctions about how to deal with survivors for there to be any implication that all were to be killed. In some cities, especially early on, every man, woman, child, and beast was to be destroyed. This would surely lessen the resistance of the remaining enemies. But this was about individual cities, never about an entire nation. This explains things later also, as in Joshua, when it says they had conquered all the land - yet we know that a lot of cities still remained to be conquered. It all fits together when you understand it this way. The military power of Canaan was broken. They were incapable of resisting a full occupation by Israel. But there was still work to be done, and in fact more instructions are given here about how to handle the mopping up than about how to break the military back of Canaan.
Here is an interesting verse:
9 Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, [Deu 7:9 ESV]
Is there anywhere else in the Bible that mentions a thousand generations? This would be like 25,000 years. It has been about 3000 years since this statement was made. So...is this a clue as to how long the Age of the Gentiles might last? If so, we have a VERY long way to go yet. Hard to imagine us not all killing each other before we get to 25,000 years. Probably best to take this as God staying faithful "forever" instead of a specific time period. Still, this is interesting.
2023 - These two verses:
9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. [Deu 5:9-10 ESV]. There is a footnote to vs 10 that says "to thousands" can also correctly be translated "to the thousandth generation". So yes, there is another place in the Bible that references a thousand generations. This year, I also think it means for longer than man can ever comprehend, rather than setting a thousand generation limit on God's love.
Another promise about disease, which I focus on because we are going through this corona virus thing:
15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. [Deu 7:15 ESV]
Implies that God uses disease to chastise nations that hate Israel. The promise of no disease is specific to Israel in the context here. So the question is, can we look at this as a principle, or is this something between God and Israel? In a larger sense, perhaps this is a covenant promise that ran as long as the Sinai Covenant. Either way, it would not still apply to the New Covenant.
Here is another verse with a lot of "current interest":
20 Moreover, the LORD your God will send hornets among them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you are destroyed. [Deu 7:20 ESV]
So called murder hornets have arrived in the US. If we take these as forever principles, then who is God driving us out before? Who does He want to take over the US? A godly nation? Or is this like the Chaldeans conquering Israel later - a horrible barbaric nation sent as chastisement against a previously God-fearing nation that has gone too far down the wrong path? I think the covenant argument wins...but still...
These two paragraphs together might make a FB post. Also found this:
25 You shall serve the LORD your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. 26 None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. [Exo 23:25-26 ESV]
2023 - So none of these are guaranteed, but conditional to Israel: food and water, sickness - think cancer, arthritis and so on, chronic disease of all kinds, miscarriage and barrenness, and a long full life. In Israel's time, under the Old Covenant, God used these things to correct his people? Or God intervened to keep these "natural occurrences" from the people. That's it. The implication is that it is normal in a corrupt and sinful world for all these things to happen. In the OT, God promised, conditionally, to keep these things away. The New Covenant, so far as I know, contains no such promises. Instead, we have the Holy Spirit to comfort us even in the face of these corruptions of God's plan brought about by Adam's sin.
Possible FB post.
22 The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. [Deu 7:22 ESV]
The beasts that are eating the bodies of their enemies? Carnivores multiply because there are so many dead?