Deuteronomy 7:6-11
The holy people of the Lord must obey from the memory of electing love and redemption, because the faithful God keeps covenant love with those who love Him and repays covenant hatred with righteous judgment.
6 For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God. Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth.
7 Yahweh didn’t set his love on you nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples;
8 but because Yahweh loves you, and because he desires to keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, Yahweh has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 Know therefore that Yahweh your God himself is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with them who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations,
10 and repays those who hate him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack to him who hates him. He will repay him to his face.
11 You shall therefore keep the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances which I command you today, to do them.
The holy people of the LORD must obey from the memory of electing love and redemption, because the faithful God keeps covenant love with those who love Him and repays covenant hatred with righteous judgment.
Moses grounds Israel's required separation from idolatrous covenant compromise in the LORD's gracious election, covenant love, patriarchal oath, and redemptive act that made Israel His holy treasured people.
Moses addresses the second generation on the plains of Moab after the wilderness judgment and before entry into Canaan. The passage follows the command to avoid covenants, intermarriage, and idolatrous compromise with the nations, and it explains why such separation is required: Israel has been chosen, loved, redeemed, and set apart by the LORD.
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.