Deuteronomy 7:12-16
Because the Lord is faithful to His sworn covenant love, Israel must hear and keep His commands, receive the land's blessings as covenant gifts, and refuse the idolatry that would ensnare them.
12 It shall happen, because you listen to these ordinances and keep and do them, that Yahweh your God will keep with you the covenant and the loving kindness which he swore to your fathers.
13 He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your livestock and the young of your flock, in the land which he swore to your fathers to give you.
14 You will be blessed above all peoples. There won’t be male or female barren among you, or among your livestock.
15 Yahweh will take away from you all sickness; and he will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you know, on you, but will lay them on all those who hate you.
16 You shall consume all the peoples whom Yahweh your God shall deliver to you. Your eye shall not pity them. You shall not serve their gods; for that would be a snare to you.
Because the LORD is faithful to His sworn covenant love, Israel must hear and keep His commands, receive the land's blessings as covenant gifts, and refuse the idolatry that would ensnare them.
Moses exhorts Israel to listen to, keep, and do the LORD's laws by showing that covenant obedience rests under the LORD's faithful covenant love and is joined to the promised blessings of life in the land, while also warning that Israel must not spare or serve the idolatrous nations because their gods would become a snare.
Moses addresses Israel on the plains of Moab before entry into Canaan. The wilderness generation has fallen under judgment, the LORD has already given victories east of the Jordan, and Israel now stands under renewed covenant instruction before entering a land filled with entrenched idolatrous worship systems.
A Holy People Set Apart: Election, Separation, and the Logic of Covenant Love
The LORD's command to destroy the Canaanite nations and refuse all covenant with them is grounded not in Israel's superiority but in the logic of holy love: because the LORD set his affection on the fathers and chose their offspring out of all peoples, Israel must be what it has been declared — a holy people wholly separated from every rival claim on their devotion, trusting the faithful God who will drive out opponents greater than themselves.