71 " When the Lord your God brings you into the land where e you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before e 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, 2 and when the Lord your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. 3 "Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons , nor shall you take their daughters for your sons . 4 "For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods ; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you. 5 "But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars , and smash their sacred pillars , and hew down their Asherim , and burn their graven images with fire .
6 "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God ; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth . 7 " The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples , for you were the fewest of all peoples , 8 but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers , the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery , from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt . 9 "Know therefore that the Lord your God , He is God , the faithful God , who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments ;
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Deuteronomy 7:1-9
Commentary on Deuteronomy 7:1-11
(Read Deuteronomy 7:1-11)
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.