NSV — Deuteronomy 7

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Deuteronomy 7

1When the Lord thy God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, and has cast out many nations before you: the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, the seven nations greater and mightier than you; 2And when the Lord your God shall deliver them before you; you shall smite them, and utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: 3Neither shall you make marriages with them; your daughter you shall not give unto his son, nor his daughter shall you take unto your son. 4For they will turn away your son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy you suddenly. 5But thus shall you deal with them; you shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire. 6For you are an holy people unto the Lord your God: the Lord your God has chosen you to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. 7The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all people: 8But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, has the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9Know therefore that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps his covenant and shows mercy to them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; 10And repays them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hates him, he will repay him to his face. 11Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I command thee this day, to do them. 12Wherefore it shall come to pass, if you remember these judgments, and keep them and do them, that the Lord thy God shall keep unto you the covenant and the mercy which he swore unto thy fathers: 13And he will love you, and bless you, and multiply you: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of your land, your corn, and your wine, and your oil, the increase of your kin, and the flocks of your sheep, in the land which he soare unto your fathers to give you. 14You shall be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle. 15And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you know, upon you; but will lay them upon all them that hate you. 16And you shall consume all the people which the Lord your God shall deliver unto you; your eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shall you serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. 17If you shall say in your heart, 'These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them?' 18You shalt not be afraid of them: but shalt well remember what the Lord thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt; 19The great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm, whereby the Lord thy God brought thee out: so shall the Lord thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid. 20Moreover the Lord thy God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed. 21You shall not become afraid at their presence: for the Lord thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible. 22And the Lord thy God will put out those nations before you by little and little: you may not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon you. 23But the Lord your God shall deliver them unto you, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed. 24And he shall deliver their kings into your hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until you have destroyed them. 25The graven images of their gods shall you burn with fire: you shall not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto you, lest you be snared there by; for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. 26Neither shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be a cursed thing like it: but you shall utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.

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Deuteronomy 7:16 [16] (Ellicott's) Thou shalt consume (literally, eat up) all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee. — When delivered to Israel, they are delivered for execution; but the time of delivery is in the hand of Jehovah. (Comp. the words of Caleb and Joshua in Numbers 14:9 : “They are bread for us: their shadow is departed from them, and the Lord is with us.”)

The Survivorship Covenant

In Deuteronomy 7:9 we read that God will be loyal to his covenant by preserving the covenant nation (and destroying those other).

Deuteronomy 7:1 h.ונשל This is an expression denoting casting away, and throwing to a distance, and similar is, (Deuteronomy 19:5) “and the iron flies off" (ונשל).

Deuteronomy 7:2 h.ולא תחנם means, THOU SHALT NOT ASCRIBE GRACE (חן) TO THEM: it is forbidden to a person to say “How beautiful is this heathen”. Another explanation: thou shalt not grant them a חניה, an encampment (a settlement) in the land (Avodah Zarah 20a).

Deuteronomy 7:4 h.כי יסיר את בנך מאחרי FOR HE WILL TURN AWAY THY SON FROM FOLLOWING ME — i.e., the son of the heathen when he marries thy daughter, will turn away thy son (grandson) whom thy daughter will bear unto him from following Me. This teaches us, that thy daughter's son who is born of a heathen is termed thy son, but thy son’s son, who is born of a heathen woman, is not termed thy son, but her son, for, you see, in regard to the statement: “his daughter thou shalt not take [to thy son]" it does not add “For she will turn away thy son (grandson) from following Me" (Yevamot 23a).

Deuteronomy 7:5 h.מזבחתיהם — a מזבח is something built up of several stones,

h.ומצבתם — alludes to a single stone (cf. Rashi on Deuteronomy 12:3).

h.ואשירהם — Trees which they worship (Avodah Zarah 48a).

h.ופסליהם — These are images.

Deuteronomy 7:7 h.לא מרבכם NOT ON ACCOUNT OF YOUR BEING [MORE] NUMEROUS — This is to he understood according to its plain sense. But its Midrashic explanation (taking לא מרבכם in the sense of “not because you are great") is: Because you do not regard yourselves as great when I shower good, upon you, therefore חשק … בכם DID [THE LORD] DELIGHT IN YOU

h.כי אתם המעט FOR YOU ARE LITTLE — you regard yourselves as small, as, e.g., Abraham did who said, (Genesis 18:27) “For I am dust and ashes", and as, e.g., Moses and Aaron did who said, (Exodus 16:7) “And we, what are we?". Not as Nebuchadnezzar who said, (Isaiah 14:14) “I will be like the Most High", and Sennacherib who said, (Isaiah 36:20) “Who are they among all the gods of these countries [that have delivered their countries out of my hand?]", and Hiram who said, (Er. 28:2), “I am a god, I sit in the seat of God" (Chullin 89a).

h.כי אתם המעט — Here you have the word כי used in the sense of “because".

Deuteronomy 7:8 h.כי מאהבת — Here, however, you have the word כי used in the sense of “but": NOT ON ACCOUNT THAT YE WERE MORE NUMEROUS … DID GOD DELIGHT IN YOU … BUT ON ACCOUNT OF THE LORD'S LOVE TO YOU.

h.ומשמרו את השבועה means, on account of His keeping the oath.

Deuteronomy 7:9 h.לאלף דור TO A THOUSAND GENERATIONS — But elsewhere (5:10) it states: to thousands of generations! The explanation is: Here where it is connected with (refers to) "those who keep His commandments" it states that God's grace is extended to a thousand generations; but there where it is associated with "those who love Him" it states that it is extended to thousands of generations (Sotah 31a);

h.לאהביו are those who do the commandments out of love.

h.ולשמרי מצותיו are those who do them out of fear.

Deuteronomy 7:10 h.ומשלם לשנאיו אל פניו AND HE REPAYETH THEM THAT HATE HIM TO THEIR FACE [IN ORDER TO MAKE THEM PERISH] — i.e. during their lifetime (cf. Rashi on Genesis 11:28 s. v. על פני) he repayeth them their good recompense, in order to banish them from the future world (cf. Onkelos).

Deuteronomy 7:11 h.היום לעשותם [WHICH I COMMANDED THEE] TO-DAY TO DO THEM — to do them to-day, but only in the time to come — in the future world — to receive the reward for them (Eruvin 22a).

Deuteronomy 7:12 h.והיה עקב תשמעון AND THE CONSEQUENCE WILL BE, IF YE HEARKEN (The Hebrew text may be taken to signify if you will hear the heel, עקב) — If, even the lighter commands which a person usually treads on with his heels (i.e. which a person is inclined to treat lightly), ye will hearken to,

h.ושמר ה׳ וגו׳ THEN THE LORD [THY GOD] WILL KEEP FOR THEE His promise (Midrash Tanchuma, Eikev 1).

Deuteronomy 7:13 h.שגר אלפיך means the offspring of thy oxen which the female casts out (שגר) from its womb.

h.ועשתרות צאנך AND THE BREEDS OF THY FLOCK — Menachem ben Seruk explains this expression to be parallel to אבירי בשן, which means: "the strong rams of Bashan” (Psalms 22:13), i.e. the choicest of the sheep, similar to (Genesis 14:5), “Ashteroth (עשתרות) Karnaim", where also it is an expression for “strength" (so that עשתרות denotes “the strong ones"). Onkelos. however, translates it: “and the flocks of thy sheep". Our Rabbis said: Why is their name called עשתרות? Because they enrich (עשר) their owner (through the sale of their wool, etc.) (cf. Chullin 84b).

Deuteronomy 7:14 h.עקר means, a man who cannot procreate.

Deuteronomy 7:17 h.כי תאמר בלבבך — You must admit that the word כי here denotes “perhaps": perhaps thou wilt say in thy heart, “Because they are many, I shall be unable to dispossess them". Do not speak thus, לא תירא מהם THOU SHALT NOT BE AFRAID OF THEM. — For it is not possible to explain it in one of the three other meanings of כי so that the words לא תירא מהם will then appropriately fit in with it.

Deuteronomy 7:19 h.המסות means, THE TRIALS (cf. Rashi on 4:34).

h.והאתת AND THE SIGNS, for example (Exodus 4:3) “and it became a serpent”, and (Exodus 4:9) “It became blood on the dry land”....

h.והמפתים AND THE WONDERS, viz., the wondrous plagues.

h.והיה החזקה AND THE STRONG HAND — this refers to the pestilence (Sifrei Bamidbar 115:1; cf. the Passover Haggadah).

h.והזרע הנטיה AND THE OUTSTRETCHED ARM, this refers to the sword for the smiting of the firstborn (Exodus 4:23).

Deuteronomy 7:20 h.הצרעה — a species of flying insect which injected poison into them, and castrated them and blinded their eyes wherever they hid themselves (Sotah 36a).

Deuteronomy 7:22 h.פן תרבה עליך חית השדה LEST THE BEASTS OF THE FIELD INCREASE UPON THEE — But is it not a fact that if people perform the will of the Omnipresent they will not have to fear the beasts, as it is said, (Job 5:23) “And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee”?! But it states this because it was manifest before Him that they would in future sin.

Deuteronomy 7:23 h.והמם AND HE WILL CONFOUND THEM — This word is vowelled entirely (both syllables) with Kametz, because the last ם is not part of the root, and it is equivalent to וְהָם, “And he will confuse”, אותם “them”. But in (Isaiah 28:28) וְהָמַם גלגל עגלתו the verb המם consists entirely of root letters, therefore half of it (one syllable) has Kametz and half of it Patach, just like any other verb of three consonants