When Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and shall cast out many nations from before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou,
Moses tells Israel what waits across the Jordan: seven peoples hold the land, and each one is larger and stronger than Israel. That raises two questions — how could a small nation take such a land, and why would God drive out these peoples at all?
Why seven nations? One writer reads the number as deliberate.
Seven nations here display the complete power of the enemy, only to show the power of the Lord supreme above it.
Israel carried weapons, but the account of the conquest never credits them. Attacking or defending, Israel won the same way.
Did the men of Jericho or the forces of the seven nations, each greater and mightier than Israel, come against them? The Lord says, "I gave them into your hand." Did Israel attack first? Even then they did not win by sword or bow. They won because "I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you." In wars, defensive or offensive, the Lord alone brought the victory.
This was no land grab. One writer points to what these peoples had made of the land.
Those nations had filled the land with gross corruption. That was more than enough to strip them of any decent claim to keep it. In Abraham's day the cup of their sin was not yet full (Gen. 15:16); but it was overflowing when Israel's armies came upon them as God's executioners. Does anyone doubt whether it was right to dispossess those nations to make room for the Lord's chosen people? It is enough to quote Leviticus 18:25: "the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants."
God had not acted in haste, and the judgment taught Israel as well.
God had tolerated these nations for many centuries. In His mercy He waited before He drew the sword of justice. And whenever Israel carried out the divine judgment, sparing no one, they had an object lesson in the holiness and righteousness of God.
These commands have troubled readers for centuries. One writer does not soften them. He turns instead to the people judging them.
They are not prepared to say, "Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!" They cannot justify God in all His ways. In fact, they are sitting in judgment on Him. They presume to measure the workings of divine government by the standard of their own shallow thoughts. They scan the infinite by the finite. In short, they measure God by themselves.
So why demand total separation? The answer here says more about Israel than about the Canaanites.
Why were the people to keep the sharpest separation from the Canaanites? Why were they to refuse, with firm decision, to make any covenant or form any marriage alliance with them? Why were they to pull down their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves? Simply because they were a holy people. And who had made them a holy people? The Lord. He had chosen them and set His love on them. He had redeemed them and separated them to Himself. So it was His right to say what they were to be and how they were to act. This was never a case of "Stand by yourself, I am holier than you." The Lord did not choose them because they were more in number — they were the fewest of all peoples. He chose them because He loved them and would keep the oath He swore to their fathers.
Israel never finished the task, and the cost ran for centuries.
Their later history shows what this failure cost. It was the main reason they kept dabbling in idolatrous things. That dabbling brought their own judgment and dispersion under the Assyrians and Babylonians. They did not judge and destroy the evil completely, so they caught its infection and fell under its power.
Commentators read these peoples as a picture of a conflict Christians still face.
The Canaanites were the future enemies of the chosen people, already in the land. They were Satan's instrument to shut out those whom God had called, if that were possible, or at least to expose and corrupt them. According to Ephesians 6 they stand for our own foes: the world-rulers of this darkness, spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. Our conflict is with them.
One writer brings that fight into the present.
This is a picture of believers today. We are responsible to destroy the deception of evil spirits — deception that opposes the truth of the Word of God and would rob us of our rightful inheritance. We must not in any way compromise with satanic pressure.
- Cause — The seven nations lost the land because their sin was now full. The land itself was vomiting them out.
- Gift — Israel did not earn the land or win it. The Lord brought them in, cast the nations out, and won every battle Himself.
- Ground — God demanded total separation. Israel was the fewest of all peoples, not the best; He had chosen, redeemed and set them apart as His own.
- Failure — What Israel spared, infected them. Incomplete judgment on the evil ended in idolatry, exile, and dispersion.
- Reach — Commentators see in these nations the enemy at full strength, and a fight for our own inheritance. No compromise is safe.
and when Jehovah thy God shall give them up before thee and thou shalt smite them, then shalt thou utterly destroy them thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.
Israel is about to enter a land that other nations already hold. God's order is blunt: defeat them, destroy them, make no treaty, spare no one. Few verses raise sharper questions. How can a good God command this? What does it say to anyone reading it now?
The order is not a sudden outburst. It comes after long delay. Israel carries it out but does not choose it.
The reason for this has been explained again and again. Their sin was now full, though in Abraham's time it was not yet full. (Genesis 15) The land itself was spitting them out for the vile things they did. In this Israel was only carrying out God's judgment. Israel was not serving its own anger or its own greed for land. God could have destroyed them Himself by plague or famine. Instead He chose Israel to do it, and so taught His own people the most solemn lesson they could learn — how holy He is, and what sin is before Him. They would come under the same terrible judgment themselves if they followed the Canaanites into that sin. The Canaanite gods of lust and murder were what that sin fully produced and expressed.
Another writer sets this beside two earlier judgments, and marks one difference:
The first case was of course the flood… The second was the destruction of the cities of the plain, including Sodom and Gomorrah… On both occasions the destruction was God's own act — by water, and by fire and sulphur… This time He used Israel to do it. And since men were now doing His strange work of judgment, failure came in, and the work was not done thoroughly, as it was when God acted by the forces of nature.
Some readers stumble here and end up judging God. One writer names what that amounts to:
They dare to measure how God governs by the standard of their own shallow thoughts — to size up the infinite with the finite. In short, they measure God by themselves.
These two bans protected Israel from a danger worse than defeat. That danger was marriage into those nations.
It would have stopped them marrying the daughters of these peoples, and that was the surest way to catch the infection of their dreadful idol worship. Their later history shows how this failure explains much of their constant dabbling in idols, which in the end brought about their own judgment and scattering under the Assyrians and Babylonians. They did not judge and destroy the evil completely, so they caught its infection and fell under its power.
The reason is not what Israel was in itself. It is what God had made them.
Why were they to refuse firmly to make any covenant, or any marriage alliance, with them?… Simply because they were a holy people. And who had made them a holy people? The LORD. He had chosen them and set His love on them. He had redeemed them and set them apart for Himself. So it was His right alone to lay down what they were to be, and how they were to act.
Israel broke this command almost at once. How they broke it is the lesson.
They had hardly set foot in the land of Canaan before they made a covenant with the Gibeonites. Even Joshua himself fell into the trap. The ragged clothes and mouldy bread of those crafty people fooled the leaders of the people, and made them act flat against God's plain command. If the authority of God's word had ruled them, it would have kept them from the grave error of making a treaty with people who should have been completely destroyed. But they judged by what their eyes saw, and had to reap the consequences… They reasoned on what they saw, instead of obeying what they had heard.
Centuries later Israel was still excusing peace where God had forbidden it, arguing that the passage of time had softened the case:
They might try to excuse themselves by saying the lapse of time had made a difference, and the Amorites were no longer what they used to be; but the excuse could not stand before God's plain command… There is no surer road to learning the way of the wicked than to make leagues with them.
This text has been pressed into service to justify personal hatred:
To support this they pointed to passages such as Deuteronomy 7:2, where God forbids Israel to join with the Canaanites. He commands them to show no mercy to them, but to destroy them. This led to the conclusion "…and hate your enemy"… So out of the command to love, which fulfils the law according to Romans 13:10, men had made its exact opposite.
Commentators also see here an enemy that believers still face:
Seen as a picture, the Canaanites stand for Satan's agents — the spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, the rulers of the darkness of this world, whom we must wrestle with now… With these there can be, and there ought to be, no terms, no compromise, and no stopping of the fight at any time or in any circumstances.
- Ripe — the blow fell only when Canaan's sin was full. Israel acted as God's executioner, not as a conqueror grabbing land.
- Instructive — God could have used plague or famine. He used Israel's own hands, to teach them "what sin is before Him."
- Protective — no treaty and no mercy kept Israel from marrying into those nations, and marriage was the road into idol worship.
- Grounded — the reason is not Israel's merit but God's claim. He chose them and redeemed them, so He sets how they live.
- Obeyed or reasoned away — at Gibeon, Israel judged by what it saw instead of by what God had said, and paid for it.
And thou shalt make no marriages with them thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor take his daughter for thy son;
Israel is about to enter Canaan. This ban on marriage sits inside a list of hard commands about the nations already living there. Why would a merciful God forbid His people even the ordinary tie of marriage? And does the command still say anything today?
The ban on marriage does not stand alone. It belongs to a chain of refusals.
These were the instructions Jehovah gave to His people. They were clear and explicit. No mercy for the Canaanites, no covenant with them, no union, no fellowship of any kind; unsparing judgement, intense separation.
The ban runs both ways. One writer points to Solomon breaking that double command.
Solomon was openly disobeying God. God had said to His people: "You shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in to you." There was a double prohibition. We are in danger of going to the world or of letting it come in to us. Perhaps the latter possibility is even more dangerous than the first... Little by little it works its way into our homes and into our lives. Often, when we open our eyes to the danger, it is already too late.
The next verse gives the reason. God says what the foreign partner will do, not what they might do.
God stated the inevitable consequences of disobedience in this respect: "they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods, then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you." Here there is no suggestion that a God-fearing husband or wife might win an ungodly partner for the truth. The very opposite result is sure.
There is a reason behind the reason. Israel had to keep apart not because they were better, but because God had made them His.
Why were the people to keep the sharpest separation from the Canaanites? Why refuse firmly to make any covenant or form any marriage with them?... Simply because they were a holy people. And who had made them a holy people? Jehovah. He had chosen them and set His love on them. He had redeemed them, and separated them to Himself. So it was His right to say what they were to be, and how they were to act. "Be holy, for I am holy."
Israel's later history turns on this one command. One writer traces the arc.
The command to the nation of Israel at the very beginning was to keep the way of the Lord very carefully as to marriage. If they failed here, the Lord would no longer own them as His (Joshua 23). In line with this, Solomon's days of turning from God show disobedience in this very thing (1 Kings 11). Afterwards, no real recovery to God could happen without a return to this principle in their marriages (Ezra 10; Neh. 10).
Kings were not the only ones. One writer traces two deaths in one family straight back to this verse.
The two sons are dragged down to Moab with their parents. They marry Moabite women, and Jehovah puts them to death according to His word (Deut. 7:3-4). If Christian parents depart from God in heart, the effect on their children is disastrous. We never fall without dragging down others with us.
One writer also points to the same principle kept, and kept at a cost.
Abraham keeps the way of the Lord in this matter. He sends a special mission to a distant land to get a wife "in the Lord" for his son. Isaac waits for the result with patience, and looks for no marriage among the people close at hand. He might have got a daughter of Canaan; but he endured.
One writer takes the ban from Israel to the believer today, arguing from the lesser to the greater.
All Scripture has consistently warned against such mixtures. On this question, 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 is clear and decided: "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." If an Israelite had to avoid a yoke with a Gentile, how much more should a believer today form no bond with an unbeliever.
Not every yoke is equally binding.
The most intimate and permanent yoke that the world knows is that of marriage... A believer may yoke himself with an unbeliever by a business partnership... But at least he can get out of it in time, even if at financial loss to himself. But marriage he cannot get out of except by death — his own or his partner's.
But what about a marriage that already exists? One writer answers plainly.
Bad as it is for a believer to marry an unbeliever, God does not even then say, Come out from the relationship; leave your wife; part from your husband.
- Chosen — the command rests on what God did first. He loved, redeemed and set apart a people, and only then told them how to live.
- Separated — because they were His, the refusal was total. No treaty, no mercy, no marriage, in either direction.
- Turned — the danger is not friction but drift. The partner turns the son away, and there is no promise that influence runs the other way.
- Ruined — Solomon and the two sons who married in Moab show what breaking the command costs. Isaac waited rather than take a daughter of Canaan, and Ezra and Nehemiah show that recovery began by returning to it.
- Yoked — the same principle reaches believers today through 2 Corinthians 6:14. Marriage is the one yoke that only death can undo, yet a believer already married is not told to leave.
for he will turn away thy son from following me, and they will serve other gods, and the anger of Jehovah will be kindled against you, and he will destroy thee quickly.
God forbids marriage with the peoples of Canaan, and this verse says why: a foreign wife or husband would pull the sons' hearts away from Him. The warning then widens, for God's anger burns against the whole nation and not one household alone.
Marriage was the door through which idolatry entered Israel. One writer traces the nation's judgment and scattering back to this one failure:
Israel was to carry out God's judgment on these utterly corrupt peoples. Wiping them out was meant to do Israel good. It would have stopped them marrying the daughters of these peoples. Such marriages were the surest way to catch the infection of their awful idol worship. Their later history shows what this failure cost. It largely accounted for their constant dabbling in idolatry. In the end it brought their own judgment and scattering under the Assyrians and Babylonians. They failed to judge and destroy the evil completely, so they caught its infection and fell under its power.
Why demand such strict separation? A commentator answers by pressing the question himself:
The principle laid down here is of the very weightiest kind. Why were the people to keep the most marked separation from the Canaanites? Why were they to refuse, with firm decision, to make any covenant or form any marriage alliance with them? Why were they to pull down their altars, break their images, and cut down their sacred groves? Simply because they were a holy people. And who had made them a holy people? Jehovah. He had chosen them and set His love on them. He had redeemed them and set them apart for Himself. So it was His right to say what they were to be and how they were to act. "You shall be holy, for I am holy."
Influence runs one way only in this verse: the foreign partner turns the son from God. One writer applies that to Ahab:
Here there is no hint that a God-fearing husband or wife might win an ungodly partner for the truth. The very opposite result is certain. A woman's influence over a man is great. So it is of the greatest importance that God Himself matches everyone who knows Him. A marriage made in defiance of the Word has ruined many a man besides Ahab.
Israel's later history acted this out. One writer traces the line from the command to ruin and back to recovery:
From the very beginning God commanded Israel to keep His way carefully in the matter of marriage. On no account were they to give their daughters to Canaanite sons. On no account were they to take Canaanite daughters for their sons (Deut. 7:3). If they did, the Lord would no longer own them as His (Joshua 23). In line with this, Solomon's days of turning from God show disobedience in this very thing (1 Kings 11). Afterwards no real recovery to God came without a return to this principle in their marriages (Ezra 10; Neh. 10).
The reasoning here runs from the smaller case to the greater:
God plainly forbids marriage with these enemies (v.4). The foreign husband or wife would draw the Israelite into serving idols. All Scripture has always warned against such mixtures. 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 is clear and decided on this question: "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." If an Israelite had to avoid a yoke with a Gentile, how much more must a believer today form no bond with an unbeliever. This is God's Word. It is enough for every obedient heart. But if someone disobeys, he can expect painful consequences.
The same writer marks where the parallel stops:
The nations Israel was mixing with were demon worshipers. So God had flatly forbidden any marriage with them. Believers today are not under such a law. Scripture still tells them, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers" (2 Cor. 6:14). If they disobey it, Scripture does not tell them to put the unbeliever away. It says instead, "the wife should not separate from her husband" (1 Cor. 7:10)... Today a believer who marries an unbeliever does not escape the painful results of this disobedience. He must learn them by experience.
- Chosen — God chose Israel, loved them and redeemed them. That alone made them holy, and it gave Him the right to say how they should live.
- Infected — marriage was the surest way to catch the idolatry around them. They failed to judge the evil, so it took them over.
- Turned — the pull runs one way. There is no hint that a God-fearing partner will win the other for the truth.
- Proved — Joshua, Solomon, Ezra and Nehemiah all show it. No real recovery came without a return to this command.
- Carried — if God warned an Israelite off such a yoke, how much more a believer today. The marriage still stands, and the painful results still have to be learned.
But thus shall ye deal with them ye shall break down their altars, and shatter their statues, and hew down their Asherahs, and burn their graven images with fire.
Israel is about to enter a land full of altars to other gods, and God's first order about that land is to smash them. Why total destruction rather than tolerance, and what gives Israel the right to carry it out?
The list moves through every physical support of Canaanite religion. The word behind "Asherim" — older translations render it "groves" — did not mean a stand of trees, as one reference work explains:
The word "grove" suggests a row of trees, but that cannot be the meaning, since people set up groves "under every green tree." ... On the whole, they were most probably wooden symbols of a goddess. They took the form of images or pillars, or plain tree trunks planted in the ground.
This was not an outbreak of national aggression. Commentators tie it to a promise God made to Abraham centuries earlier, that judgment would wait until wickedness was complete:
Some four hundred years earlier God had told Abraham, "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Gen. 15:16). But now it clearly was complete. God planned to wipe them out, as He had already done with the world before the flood and then with Sodom — only this time using Israel to do it.
Verse 6 supplies the ground for verse 5, and it is not Israel's superiority. The demolition flows from what God had made them:
Why were they to demolish their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves? Simply because they were a holy people. And who had made them a holy people? God did. He had chosen them and set His love on them. He had redeemed them and separated them to Himself. So it was His right, and His alone, to say what they were to be, and how they were to act.
The command targets objects, not just people, and the reason is that idolatry spreads by contact:
When Israel entered the promised land under Joshua, God strictly commanded them to touch nothing. They were to make a clean sweep of the nations living there and all their works. These instructions were sanitary precautions of a spiritual kind. Idolatry is terribly infectious as well as corrupting, and a policy of thorough isolation was the only safe one.
Israel never finished the job. Their later history proved the warning right:
Their later history shows what this failure cost them. It largely explains their constant dabbling in idolatrous things, which in the end brought their own judgment and scattering under the Assyrians and Babylonians. They failed to judge and destroy the evil completely, so they caught its infection and fell under its power.
The first breach came quickly. Joshua and the leaders made a treaty with the Gibeonites, a Canaanite group who arrived in worn-out clothes and with mouldy bread, pretending to have travelled from far away:
No doubt the story of the Gibeonites sounded believable, and their whole appearance gave a show of truth to what they said. But none of this should have carried the slightest moral weight with Joshua and the leaders. It would not have, if only they had remembered the word of the Lord. But they failed in this. They reasoned on what they saw, instead of obeying what they had heard. Reason is no guide for the people of God. We must be guided and governed, absolutely and completely, by the word of God.
Later kings did more than tolerate foreign worship; they imported it because it looked good. One writer traces the line from this verse straight into the present:
Israel was to destroy the altars of these enemy nations without hesitation, with their sacred pillars and all their images (v.5). However attractive these things looked, they must not dare to spare any of them. Despite such clear laws from God, king Ahaz of Judah saw an altar in Syria. He required the high priest to copy it for Jerusalem, pushing aside the altar of God's own design. Today the professing church has done many similar things (in a spiritual way) that insult the living God.
- Full — Judgment had waited long. God held off until "the iniquity of the Amorites" was complete, and then He acted through Israel instead of flood or fire.
- Holy — The ground of the demolition is God's choice, not Israel's merit. He had loved, redeemed and separated them, and that gave Him the right to say how they must live.
- Thorough — Altars, pillars, wooden symbols and carved images all go. Idolatry spreads by contact, so a half-cleared land stays infected.
- Obedient — Gibeon shows where the failure starts. The leaders reasoned on what they saw instead of obeying what they had heard, and reason is no guide for God's people.
- Infected — The unfinished work finished Israel. The nations they spared bred the idolatry that carried them into exile — the very end this command aimed to prevent.
For a holy people art thou unto Jehovah thy God Jehovah thy God hath chosen thee to be unto him a people for a possession, above all the peoples that are upon the face of the earth.
Moses has just told Israel to pull down the altars of the nations in Canaan, and to make no treaty and no marriage with them. This verse gives the reason, and the reason is not Israel's strength or worth, but what God had already made them.
The word "for" ties this verse back to the demand for total separation from the nations of Canaan. One commentator puts the logic as a chain of questions and one answer:
Why were the people to maintain the most marked separation from the Canaanites? Why were they to refuse, with firm decision, to make any covenant, or form any marriage alliance with them? Why were they to demolish their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves? Simply because they were a holy people. And who had made them a holy people? Jehovah. He had chosen them and set His love upon them. He had redeemed them and separated them to Himself. So it was His right and His privilege to say what they were to be, and how they were to act. "You shall be holy, for I am holy."
Moses says what Israel is. He does not set holiness before them as a goal to reach. One writer draws out the difference:
"You are a people holy to the LORD your God." He does not say, "You ought to be a holy people." How could they ever make themselves a holy people, or a people belonging to Jehovah? Utterly impossible. If they were not His people, no effort of theirs could ever make them such. But God, in His sovereign grace, kept His covenant with their fathers. He made them His children, a people of His own above all the nations on the earth. Here was the solid foundation of Israel's moral structure. All their habits and customs, all their doings and ways, their food and their clothing, what they did and what they did not do — all was to flow out of one great fact. They had no more to do with that fact than with their natural birth. They really were the children of God, the people of His choice, the people of His own special possession.
One study traces the Hebrew word, and the older English word "peculiar," back to their roots:
The Hebrew word means "to surround on all sides," and so "to gather together, set apart, reserve, appropriate." Applied to property, it would be the private treasure a person gained or owned himself, as distinct from what he shares with others. With kings it would be the private purse, as distinct from the public treasury. Now the word "peculiar" came from the Latin peculium, which carries much the same force. It named the private purse that a member of a household could build up and keep for himself, apart from what the family had to spend for the good of all.
What should God's ownership have produced in the people?
Since they belonged to Him alone, they should deeply appreciate this honour. They should also act in constant, positive testimony for Him. Such a life runs against the course of the world.
Separation like this can turn into looking down on others. Everything depends on what the separation rests on:
There is a great difference between being separate on the ground of what we are, and of what God is. The former makes a man a Pharisee; the latter makes him a saint. If I say to a poor fellow sinner, "Stand by yourself, I am holier than you," I am a detestable Pharisee and a hypocrite. But if God, in His infinite kindness and perfect grace, says to me, "I have brought you into relationship with Myself in the person of My Son Jesus Christ, therefore be holy and separate from all evil," then I am bound to obey.
God set Israel apart, and that standing was meant to shape their conduct. One writer carries the same principle to Christians today:
They were viewed as the chosen of God, as set apart for Him. This should have led to practical holiness, as God said, "Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God." The Christian too is sanctified and justified. God has made Christ his sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30). This points to the call of God that sets a person apart, and to the means and measure of his sanctification.
- Chosen — Israel did not make itself holy. God chose, loved, redeemed and separated them. That alone gave Him the right to say how they should live.
- Declared — Moses states a fact, not a goal. Their identity was as much a given as their birth, and every habit was to flow from it.
- Treasured — the word pictures a private purse, held back from the common fund. God owns this people Himself.
- Displayed — they belonged to Him alone. They were to feel that honour and show it in a life that runs against the course of the world.
- Practised — standing must become behaviour. Separation based on what God is makes a saint. Separation based on what we are makes a Pharisee.