A reading from the book of Deuteronomy.

When the Lord Your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it

and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gergishites, the Amorites, the Canaanites,

the Parasites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you,

and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction.

You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them,

giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn

away your sons from

following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you,

and he would destroy you quickly. But thus shall you deal with them. You shall break down their

altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and chop down their asherom, and burn their carved

images with fire. For you

are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people

for his treasured possession. Out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth, it was

not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you

and chose you, for you were the fewest of all other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you,

for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you, and is keeping the oath

that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed

you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God,

the faithful God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his

commandments to a thousand generations and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them.

He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.

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