Chosen by Love, Forbidden to Absorb the Land's Worship

Seven names for a complete list. The Hittites here are the “sons of Heth” of Genesis 23, not the Anatolian empire. The Girgashites appear almost nowhere but in lists, the Hivites held Gibeon (Joshua 9:7), and the Jebusites kept Jerusalem until David (2 Samuel 5:6). Paul counts the same seven in Acts 13:19.

“No covenant” is precisely what Joshua is tricked into two chapters after Jericho, when the Hivites of Gibeon arrive in worn-out sandals (Joshua 9:3-15). “Shew mercy” is chanan, to be gracious, the root of Moses’ own plea for grace in 3:23.

“Make marriages” is a verb built on chatan, a son-in-law: to become family by marriage. 1 Kings 11:2 quotes this law in explaining Solomon’s ruin, and Ezra 9 and Nehemiah 13:25 apply it in the return from exile.

Moses slips into God’s own voice mid-sentence: “from following me”. The one who turns the son away is the foreign partner and the family that comes with the marriage. “Suddenly” means quickly; the anger that took forty years in the wilderness is not promised such patience here.

Four objects, four actions. Images are matsevot, standing stones set up as pillars. Groves are asherim, wooden poles or trees sacred to the goddess Asherah; the King James followed the Greek and Latin in reading them as groves. 12:3 repeats the list almost exactly.

“Special people” is am segullah. A segullah is a treasured private possession, the word David uses for the gold and silver of his own that he gives to the temple, “mine own proper good” (1 Chronicles 29:3). Exodus 19:5 renders it “peculiar treasure”; 1 Peter 2:9 takes it up.

“Set his love” is chashaq, to be attached to, to long for. It is the word Hamor uses of Shechem’s desire for Dinah (Genesis 34:8), and of Solomon’s desire to build (1 Kings 9:19). The deliberately strong verb makes the reason an affection, not a calculation.

“Redeemed” is padah, to ransom by payment, the verb used for buying back a firstborn son (Exodus 13:13). The picture is of a slave purchased out of Pharaoh’s hand. The oath sworn to the fathers is the second reason, standing beside love.

“Faithful” is ne’eman, from aman, the root of amen: firm, dependable, able to bear weight. This verse spells out the “thousands” of 5:10 as a thousand generations, the phrase Psalm 105:8 uses of the covenant with Abraham.

“To their face” means in person, directly. Targum Onkelos renders it “in their lifetime”, reading the verse as a counterweight to 5:9: judgment falls on the one who hates, and is not slow to do it. That is the Targum’s reading; the plain sense is at least personal.

“This day, to do them” gave the Talmud a saying: “today to do them, and tomorrow to receive their reward” (Eruvin 22a). The verse closes the unit that 7:6 opened with Israel’s holiness, bringing election back to concrete commands.

“If ye hearken” translates eqev, a word meaning heel: on the heel of your hearing, as a consequence of it. The synagogue reading that begins here takes its name from it. Rashi read the heel as the small commandments people trample underfoot.

Corn, wine and oil, dagan, tirosh and yitshar, are the three staples of the hill country. “Increase of thy kine” and “flocks of thy sheep” use shegar and ashterot, words that also name deities, Sheger and Astarte. Deuteronomy turns the goddess’s name into a farmer’s word for lambs.

Israel’s line began with barren women: Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel each waited for a child. The promise that no one shall be barren reverses that beginning. Exodus 23:26 had made the same promise, adding that nothing would cast its young.

“Which thou knowest” assumes the hearers remember Egypt’s illnesses; 28:27 names “the botch of Egypt” among the curses. Exodus 15:26 made the first promise of this kind at Marah, where the LORD named himself the one that healeth thee.

“Consume” is akhal, to eat. Joshua and Caleb had said at Kadesh, “they are bread for us” (Numbers 14:9). “Thine eye shall have no pity” recurs at 13:8, 19:13 and 19:21. A snare is a bird trap, and Judges 2:3 fulfils the warning: their gods shall be a snare unto you.

“If thou shalt say in thine heart” is one of Deuteronomy’s habits: it quotes a thought before it is spoken, as in 8:17, 9:4 and 18:21. The fear is phrased in the verb of inheritance, yarash, in its causative form: to make someone else give up possession.

Israel’s enemies remembered Egypt too. Rahab tells the spies what was heard of the Red Sea (Joshua 2:10), and the Philistines, seeing the ark come into Israel’s camp, cry “these are the Gods that smote the Egyptians” (1 Samuel 4:8).

The list is the one from 4:34 shortened; war and great terrors drop out. Moses will repeat it once more in the plains of Moab (29:3). The last clause turns the fear around: the ones Israel is afraid of are now the ones who should be.

The hornet is tsir’ah, promised already in Exodus 23:28. Joshua looks back in Joshua 24:12, “I sent the hornet before you, which drave them out”, and applies it to the two kings of the Amorites. Some have seen an allusion to Egypt, whose royal emblem included a bee; that is a guess.

“Affrighted” is arats, to tremble with dread, the verb God uses to Joshua in Joshua 1:9, “be not afraid”. “A mighty God and terrible” is great and awesome, el gadol venora, the title that opens the prayers of Nehemiah (1:5) and Daniel (9:4).

“Thou mayest not” is literally thou art not able: a statement of capacity, not a permission refused. Exodus 23:29-30 gave the reason about wild beasts. Judges 2:20-3:4 gives another: the nations were left to prove Israel, and to teach war to a generation that had not known it.

“A mighty destruction” is mehumah, panic or confusion, the kind God sends into an enemy camp. The verb behind it troubled Pharaoh’s army at the sea (Exodus 14:24), and the noun names the rout of the Philistines at Michmash, “a very great discomfiture” (1 Samuel 14:20).

Joshua 12 lists the kings delivered into Israel’s hand, thirty and one of them west of the Jordan. “No man shall be able to stand before thee” is quoted to Joshua at his commission (Joshua 1:5). Blotting out a name is also the sentence on Amalek in 25:19.

“Desire” is chamad, the verb of the tenth commandment. Achan uses it in his confession at Jericho: “I coveted them, and took them” (Joshua 7:21), and the things were a Babylonish garment, silver and a wedge of gold, exactly the valuables this verse warns about.

“Detest” and “abhor” are shaqats and ta’av. The first is the word Leviticus 11 uses for unclean creatures, things to be loathed on sight. “Cursed thing” is cherem, the ban itself: whoever takes it home becomes cherem, as Joshua 7:12 says of Israel after Achan.