Dt. 7: Warning!

Deuteronomy 7:2 "and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy."

Chapter 7 is like, "This is how it's going down." The Israelites have to completely and utterly destroy these seven nations: The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. We've heard those names before, numerous times. All larger nations. Israel is revealed in verse 7 to be the fewest of all peoples. The least. But God will use a tiny nation like Israel to destroy the bigger ones.

With great detail, Israel is instructed on how to destroy these nations...burn altars, tear down idols, slaughter every living person without pity. Can you imagine getting a command like that from God? To kill someone is tough to stomach, even then, and then to do it pitilessly...that's a lot to ask, from me at least.

And I thought, why can't people live side-by-side with the Israelites? Instead of Israel changing their ways, they have to kill off other nations so that Israel doesn't adopt their ways? Seems like a very severe safeguard. But then in verse six, I read that Israel is "a people holy to the LORD your God." They are to be separate from these other nations. We already know what happens when Israel hangs out with other nations.

Basically all the good things you could imagine will happen if God's commands and decrees are kept. And there are a lot of them. And I get the idea that obedience to God trumps following the actual commands. What I mean to say by that is that the consequences of following these commands aren't what leads to the prosperity, the increase, good health, etc. It is the act of obeying God.

God will send hornets to kill anyone the Israelites miss. I find that kinda funny, and also kinda terrifying. What's more creepy and doomy than a swarm of hornets? Eww.

Israel's holiness, and God's holiness are to be preserved, and all else is to be detested.