[Commentary from the best of Jewish minds, collected in an excellent resource: Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; our translation of choice is EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses..—Admin1]
Deuteronomy/Davarim 7
Observance of the Fundamental Laws–the Ten Commandments and Shema–demands avoidance of intermarriage, and the destruction of all idolatrous worship in the Promised Land.
1 When YHVH your God brings you to the land that you are entering to possess, and dislodges great nations before you -the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perrizite, the Hivvite, and the Yevusite- seven nations more numerous and mightier (in number) than you,
before thee. lit. ‘from before thee,’ i.e. to make way for thee. The nations here enumerated are mentioned in Gen. X,15-18, XV,19; Exod. III,8,17; XIII,5 and elsewhere. The Midrash states that the Girgashites left Canaan before the entry of the Israelites.
utterly destroy. Heb. i.e., consider them as cherem, something that must not come near thee. On the ‘ban’ against the Canaanites, see XX,18.
show mercy. Better, show grace; or, ‘give gifts to’ (Talmud). The Rabbis restrict this prohibition, as all others in this connection, to actual idolaters like the ancient Canaanites. It does not apply to ordinary heathens who observe the fundamental laws of human society.
3 And you are not to marry (with) them: your daughter you are not to give to their son, their daughter you are not to take for your son-marriages. The evil results of such marriages were perceived by the Patriarchs; Gen. XXIV and XXVIII. Moses had previously warned the people against allying themselves by marriage with their neighbours (Exod. XXXIV,16), and the warning was repeated by his successor (Josh. XXIII,12). In our own days, in conditions that are worlds asunder from those in Canaan of old, intermarriage is no less fatal to the continued existence of Israel. ‘Every Jew should feel himself bound, even though the duty involves the sacrifice of precious affections, to avoid acts calculated, however remotely, to weaken the stability of the ancestral religion. Every Jew who contemplates marriage outside the pale must regard himself as paving the way to a disruption which would be the final, as it would be the culminating, disaster in the history of his people’ (M. Joseph).
4 for they would turn-aside your son from (following) after me and they would serve other gods, and the anger of YHVH would flare up against you, and he would destroy you quickly.he will turn away. i.e., the heathen who marries thy daughter.
thy son. The Talmud explains this to mean thy grandson. Since the Torah, on this interpretation calls the child of an Israelite mother and gentile father the ‘son’ of an Israelite grandfather, it was deduced therefrom that the child is to be regarded as being of the same race and faith as the mother. Consequently, the child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother follows in Jewish Law the religious status of the mother.
5 Rather, thus are you to do to them: their slaughter-sites you are to wreck, their standing-pillars you are to smash, their sacred-trees you are to cut-to-shreds, and their carved-images you are to burn with fire!pillars. Symbols of the sun-god Baal.
Asherim. A tree planted (XVI,21), or a pole set up (II Kings XVII,10), as sacred symbols of Astarte, the goddess of fertility.
6-11. REASONS FOR PREVIOUS COMMANDS
6 For you are a people holy to YHVH your God, (it is) you (that) YHVH your God chose for him as a treasured people from among all peoples that are on the face of the soil.thou art a holy people. See Exod. XIX,5—the classical passage announcing the covenant between God and Israel. Being a holy people, Israel was not to be contaminated by foul and cruel worship. It was to be a People apart from the other nations, and untainted by their heathenish practices.
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His own treasure. See on Exod. XIX,5. ‘The character of Israel as the Chosen People does not involve the inferiority of other nations. The universality of Israel’s idea of God is sufficient proof against such an assumption. Every nation requires a certain self-consciousness for the carrying out of its mission. Israel’s self-consciousness was tempered by the memory of its slavery in Egypt, and the recognition of its being the servant of the LORD. It was the noblesse oblige of the God-appointed worker for the entire human race ‘ (Guedemann).
7 Not because of your being many-more than all the peoples has YHVH attached himself to you and chosen you, for you are the least-numerous of all peoples!set His love upon you. The root is used of the ‘blind’, non-rational love. God’s love of Israel is like that love (cheshek) for which no reason is to be sought, as it is due solely to the desire of the lover (Albo).
the fewest of all peoples. lit. ‘ the few out of the totality of peoples’; i.e. only a small fragment of the whole of humanity (Herxheimer, Dillmann). Israel is a small nation, but it has been chosen to accomplish world-embracing and eternal things. ‘All the great things have been done by the little nations’ (Disraeli). ‘God has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carries the choicest wines to the lives of humanity, to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to stimulate and strengthen their faith’ (Lloyd George).
8 Rather, because of YHVH’S love for you and because of his keeping the sworn-oath that he swore to your fathers did YHVH take you out, with a strong hand, and redeem you from a house of serfs, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.9 Know that YHVH your God, he is God, the trustworthy God, keeping the covenant of loyalty with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments, to the thousandth generation,
know therefore. ‘This phrase does not mean to know so as to see the fact of, but to know so as to feel the force of. It is knowledge that is followed by shame, or by love, or by reverence, or by the sense of a duty’ (G.A. Smith).
10 and paying back those who hate him to his face, by causing them to perish- he does not delay (punishment) to those who hate him to his face; he pays them back!11 So you are to keep the command: the laws and the regulations that I command you today, by observing them.
12-16. THE BLESSINGS OF OBEDIENCE
The reward of obedience will be prosperity, vital power, and health.
12 Now it shall be: because of your hearkening to these regulations, keeping and observing (them), then YHVH will keep for you the covenant of loyalty that he swore to your fathers;13 he will love you, he will bless you, he will make-you-many, he will bless the fruit of your
belly and the fruit of your soil, your grain, your new-wine, and your shining-oil, the offspring of your cattle and the fecundity of your sheep, upon the soil that he swore to your fathers, to give you.
corn . . .wine . . .oil. The principal products of Canaan.
14 Blessed shall you be above all peoples: there shall not be among you (any) barren-male or barren-female, nor among your animals.15 YHVH will remove from you all sickness and all evil illnesses from Egypt that you know, he will not put (any of) them upon you, but will place them upon all those who hate you.
diseases of Egypt. The climate of Egypt is unhealthy, especially at certain seasons of the year. Pliny describes Egypt as ‘the mother of worst diseases’.
16 You shall devour all the peoples that YHVH your God gives to you; your eye is not to pity them, you are not to serve their gods, for that is a snare to you!17-26. ISRAEL’S STRUGGLE WITH THE CANAANITE NATIONS
God will be his Helper. Let not Israel in the hour of victory come to terms with Idolatry.
17 If you should say in your heart: More numerous are these nations than I, how will I be able to dispossess them?are more than I. “They are too many for me.’
18 Do not be afraid of them; bear-in-mind, yes, in mind, what YHVH your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt-19 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs and the portents, the strong hand and the outstretched arm by which YHVH your God took you out- thus will YHVH your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.
20 And also the hornet, YHVH your God will send-loose upon them, until they perish, those left and those hidden from you.
hornet. Exod. XXIII,28. A plague of hornets would drive the Canaanites from their hiding-places into the open. Some of the species of hornets found in Palestine have their nests in rock-caves. There is a novel and illuminating explanation of the meaning of the ‘hornet’. It was the badge of Thotmes III and his successors, and would thus be a veiled reference to the systematic series of invasions and conquests in Palestine undertaken by that Pharaoh. These invasions had reduced the fighting power and resistance of the Canaanites (Garstang).
21 Do not be terrified before them, for YHVH your God is among you, a God great and awe-inspiring.affrighted at them. So as to seek safety in flight.
and awful. God alone is to be feared, and the fear of Him would drive out any other.
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little and little. Otherwise, large areas would be left desolate, in which wild beasts would multiply; see II Kings XVII,24, also Exod. XXIII,29.
beasts of the field. Wild beasts, as ‘field’ is here used in the sense of uncultivated territory. The country was at no time in the Biblical age so settled that the jungle lay wholly beyond the range of ordinary experience. ‘How constant the war of man against wild animals was in ancient Palestine, may be felt from the promise of their being tamed as one of the elements of the Messianic Age; Isa. XI,6-8’ (G.A. Smith).
23 YHVH your God will give them before you, he will panic them with a great panic until they are destroyed.discomfit them with a great discomfiture. ‘Rout them in a crushing defeat’ (Moffatt).
24 He will give their kings into your hand, so that you cause their name to perish from under heaven; no man will be able to take-a-stand against you until you have caused them to perish.25 The carved-images of their gods, you are to burn with fire, you are not to come-to-yearn for (the) silver and gold on account of them, and so take it for yourself, lest you be ensnared by it- for it is an abomination to YHVH your God!
the silver or the gold that is on them. The wooden image was usually overlaid with one of the precious metals; see Isa. XL,19.
snared therein. i.e. brought into misfortune, through God’s judgment being provoked by the heathenish relic in the Israelite’s home.
26 You are not to bring an abomination into your house -you would become devoted-for-destruction like it!- you are to hold-it-in-disgust, yes, disgust, you are to consider-it-abominable, yes, abominable, for it is (something) devoted-for-destruction!an abomination. Heb., a contemptuous term for an idolatrous image, unchastity, or dishonest dealing.
be accursed like unto it. Better, be an accursed thing; i.e. become a herem. He who brings an abomination into his house, himself becomes abominable; see the story of Achan, Josh. VII.