Deuteronomy7chapter 7

Deuteronomy 7:1-2

Seven nations are named here and Genesis 15:19-21 had named ten to Abraham. Commentators account for the difference by the centuries of war and absorption that fall between the promise and the possession. Verse 2 gives the command in three parts, utterly destroy them, make no covenant with them, and shew no mercy unto them, and it supplies no ground at this point; the ground arrives at verses 7 and 8. Genesis 15:16 had already fixed the timing by the iniquity of the Amorites, which was not yet full in Abraham's day.

Deuteronomy 7:3-5

The marriage prohibition carries its reason in the next breath, that they will turn away thy son from following me. 1 Kings 11:1-4 reports that outcome in Solomon, whose wives turned away his heart in his old age, and Ezra 9:1-2 and Nehemiah 13:23-27 both reach back to this passage in the same connection. Verse 5 turns from the people to the apparatus of their worship, altars, images, groves and graven images, and Exodus 34:12-16 had already set the same three together, no covenant, no marriage, and broken images.

Deuteronomy 7:6-8

Holy and special render two words, the second of which is segullah, a king's own treasure held apart from the public store. The Septuagint gives it as laon periousion, the phrase Titus 2:14 uses of the church, while 1 Peter 2:9 gathers the same language out of Exodus 19:5-6. Verses 7 and 8 then supply the ground the chapter has withheld, that the choice rested on no quality in Israel, since they were the fewest of all people, but on the love of the LORD and on an oath sworn to their fathers. Calvin reads the election in this chapter as a reason for obedience laid on the people rather than as a warrant for pride.

Deuteronomy 7:9-11

Verse 9 repeats the wording of the second commandment at Exodus 20:5-6, and verse 10 changes what stands there. Exodus visits iniquity upon the third and fourth generation, while here the repayment lands on the man himself, to his face, and the phrase falls twice in the one verse. Mercy running to a thousand generations against a repayment inside a single lifetime is an asymmetry the text means, and Deuteronomy 24:16 states the same limit as law, that fathers shall not be put to death for the children.

Deuteronomy 7:12-14

The blessings promised here are the seed of chapter 28, where the same items return at length before the curses take over that chapter. Corn, wine and oil is a set phrase in this book, recurring at 11:14, 14:23, 18:4 and at 28:51, where an enemy eats it. Barnes reads the words rendered flocks of thy sheep as a plural of Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians named at 1 Kings 11:5, so a word for fertility taken from the neighbours' religion carries the increase God gives, in a chapter that has just ordered her groves cut down.

Deuteronomy 7:15

Sickness is handled by promise, and the diseases of Egypt are named as something the hearers have already seen, which thou knowest. Exodus 15:26 had made the same promise at Marah and attached a name to it, I am the LORD that healeth thee. Chapter 28:27 and 28:60 then turn the sentence around and put the diseases of Egypt on Israel itself, so one clause serves the blessing and the curse.

Deuteronomy 7:16-17

The command of verse 2 returns in shorter form and gains a clause that names what the chapter is guarding against, neither shalt thou serve their gods, for that will be a snare unto thee. Verse 17 then puts the objection in the hearer's own heart, these nations are more than I, how can I dispossess them, which is the report the spies brought back at Numbers 13:31. Chapter 1:26-33 has already told that story, so a reader meets the same fear twice in this book, once as history and once as a question waiting for an answer.

Deuteronomy 7:18-19

Remember is one of the two commands running through this book, fourteen occurrences against nine of forget, and here it is the answer given to fear. What is to be remembered is an event rather than a doctrine, what the LORD thy God did unto Pharaoh and unto all Egypt. The signs, the wonders, the mighty hand and the stretched out arm form a fixed formula that returns at 4:34, 11:2-3 and 26:8, and the argument runs straight from what God did to Egypt to what he will do to the people of whom thou art afraid.

Deuteronomy 7:20-21

The hornet appears three times in Scripture, here, at Exodus 23:28 and at Joshua 24:12, and in each place God sends it ahead of Israel. Readers have taken it three ways. Gill reports Aben Ezra reading it as a disease, others hold to the insects themselves, and a further reading takes the hornet for Egyptian military pressure on Canaan, since the bee served as a royal emblem in Egypt. Verse 21 puts the ground of courage in one clause, the LORD thy God is among you, which is the presence housed in the tabernacle in the middle of the camp.

Deuteronomy 7:22-23

By little and little is given a reason drawn from the ground itself, that the beasts of the field would increase in emptied country, and Exodus 23:29-30 gave the same reason in almost the same words. Judges 2:20-23 supplies a different reason for nations left in the land, that God left them to prove Israel, and both accounts stand in the canon. The pace of the conquest is stated here as God's arrangement, while verse 23 keeps the outcome fixed, destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.

Deuteronomy 7:24

Joshua 12 lists thirty-one kings taken on the west of Jordan, which is this verse carried out and counted. To destroy their name from under heaven is the sentence passed on Amalek at 25:19, where the remembrance of Amalek is to be blotted out from under heaven. The clause about no man being able to stand before thee is spoken again to Joshua himself at Joshua 1:5, at the point where the charge passes from Moses to his successor.

Deuteronomy 7:25-26

The silver and gold on the images is forbidden with a reason attached, lest thou be snared therein, and Joshua 7:21 is the case in point, where Achan takes a wedge of gold and a garment out of Jericho and Israel loses the next battle. Judges 8:24-27 has Gideon make an ephod out of spoil and all Israel go a whoring after it. Barnes reads Romans 2:22 as an allusion to this command, where Paul asks a reader who abhors idols whether he commits sacrilege. The chapter closes on the word cursed, which is herem, the same root translated utterly destroy at verse 2, so the thing devoted to destruction and the man who keeps it in his house fall under one term.