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Deuteronomy 7:1-3
New Catholic Bible
Deuteronomy 7:1-3
New Catholic Bible
Chapter 7
Destroying the Nations.[a] 1 When the Lord, your God, has brought you into the land that you are entering to take possession of and he has driven out many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations in all, each larger and stronger than you are 2 and when the Lord, your God, will have delivered them over to you and you will have defeated them, you are to wipe them out. You are not to make a covenant with them or show them any mercy. 3 [b]Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons nor take their daughters for your sons.
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- Deuteronomy 7:1 By slaughtering its enemies, Israel safeguards itself against the danger of being absorbed by the pagan world around it. When God began the education of his people, he could not immediately require them to rise above the rough and brutal practices of the age.
Deuteronomy provides other examples of such barbaric customs. It does indeed urge an unyielding resistance to the attractions of paganism, but it prescribes that the separation be accomplished in a fairly peaceful way. - Deuteronomy 7:3 Do not intermarry: the challenge, then as now, is to remain faithful to the one, true God in marriage.
