Study Desk

"You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and His provisions and His statutes which He has commanded you.

"When your son asks you in time to come, saying, 'What do the provisions and the statutes and the judgments mean which the LORD our God commanded you?'

"So the LORD commanded us to follow all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God for our own good always and for our survival, as it is today.

"And it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to follow all this commandment before the LORD our God, just as He commanded us.

"When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to take possession of it, and He drives away many nations from before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you,

and when the LORD your God turns them over to you and you defeat them, you shall utterly destroy them. You shall not make a covenant with them nor be gracious to them.

"For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His personal possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

"Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His faithfulness to a thousand generations for those who love Him and keep His commandments;

"Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep His covenant with you and His faithfulness which He swore to your forefathers.

"You shall consume all the peoples whom the LORD your God will turn over to you; your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.

you are not to be afraid of them; you shall remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt:

the great trials which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders, and the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the LORD your God brought you out. The LORD your God will do the same to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.

"Indeed, the LORD your God will send the hornet against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish.

"You are not to be terrified of them, because the LORD your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God.

"And the LORD your God will drive away these nations from you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you.

"But the LORD your God will turn them over to you, and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed.

"The carved images of their gods you are to burn with fire; you shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be trapped by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God.

"And you shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, in order to humble you, putting you to the test, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

"So you are to know in your heart that the LORD your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.

"Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him.