Deuteronomy 7: 1 – 26
Commandments, Statutes, and Judgments
7 “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. 5 But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. 6 “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 7 The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 “Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them. 12 “Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers. 13 And He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you. 14 You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock. 15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you. 16 Also you shall destroy all the peoples whom the LORD your God delivers over to you; your eye shall have no pity on them; nor shall you serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you. 17 “If you should say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’— 18 you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: 19 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, by which the LORD your God brought you out. So shall the LORD your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20 Moreover the LORD your God will send the hornet among them until those who are left, who hide themselves from you, are destroyed. 21 You shall not be terrified of them; for the LORD your God, the great and awesome God, is among you. 22 And the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. 23 But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, and will inflict defeat upon them until they are destroyed. 24 And He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you will destroy their name from under heaven; no one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. 25 You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. 26 Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.
People say that the United States of America is a nation of laws. However, I do not think our forefathers knew how things would work out hundreds of years in the future based on a ridiculous avalanche of constant new laws. Stop and think about this for a moment. We have federal laws, state laws, city laws, municipal and township laws, and organization laws. You would be shocked that you probably break a law each day just walking outside. Isn’t that a pleasant thought?
In God's instruction manual to mankind, the Bible, God has given us some wonderful laws that tell us what makes things work and what doesn't. They are truly amazing laws that are full of great wisdom and if practiced in our society today would bring great peace, happiness and prosperity. In fact our nation was built with such biblical laws and our nation was blessed because of them. However, as you know all kinds of political interest groups have pushed for and polluted the landscape by crazy new laws.
So as we begin our study of today’s scripture we need to look at a couple of questions. What is the difference between a commandment, statute, and judgment? What about ordinances, are they something different still?
These are questions many students of the Bible end up asking at some point; just what are the differences here? We have discovered that statutes and ordinances are essentially the same thing; they are decrees, requirements, or boundaries set by our Creator.
The statutes of the covenant range from apodictic law (thou shalt not under any circumstances), to casuistic law (if this is the case, then do this), to detailed descriptions of ritual regulations to be observed by the priests and the community. For Israel, everything required by the covenant was a matter of life and blessing, if properly observed, or of death and cursing, if ignored or forsaken. There are no circumstances that allow for the antisocial act of one human being killing another human being with no legal sanction: thou shalt not commit murder.
Ignorance of a given statute was no excuse. Any failure to obey a statute, ordinance, or judgment of the law was a sin.
The Bible prescribes a number of ordinances. There are applicable for a prescribed usage, practice, or ceremony.” A theological application of the term includes the expanded notion of a “religious rite or observance that sets forth the central truths of the Gospel and is of universal and perpetual obligation.”
Biblical ordinances no longer applicable today are sacrificial offerings, circumcision, and the Passover. Sacrificial offerings and the Passover were merely types superseded by the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereas circumcision ceased to be required when the apostle Paul effectively annulled it as a requirement (see 1 Corinthians 7:19 and Galatians 5:6).
So how did they come up with what ordinances that are included in church services? The rule of application that I learned is this. If a certain ceremony or ordinance appeared in the Gospels, book of Acts, and in the Epistles then the church included them as part of the ordinances.
1. The ordinance of marriage. (
2. The ordinance of baptism
3. The ordinance of communion
And also we hear about Judgments which instruct us in what to do in a situation, and commandments which are orders from our Holy God given to be followed.
Having emphasized the need to love Yahweh wholly, and to respond to Him totally in chapter 6, this chapter begins and ends with the instruction that they must have nothing to do with the corrupt Canaanites, whom He will drive out before them, but must destroy their graven images and their gods. And this is because He Himself has set His love on them, and will prosper them in their ways, but will deal harshly with those who ‘hate’ Him, that is, who rebel against Him.
The chapter includes a testimony of His sovereign love for them for their fathers’ sakes, the promise of future blessing in the land and the assurance of victory over all their enemies through Yahweh’s help. But the corollary is that they must remove all trace of idolatry from the land. No rival to Him must be allowed to remain. Thus they must diligently rid the land of them so that nothing is left in their land to rival Yahweh, or to turn them from His ways.
The emphasis we learn here is Yahweh’s election and love of His people and of the great blessings that can be the Israelites through obedience. This was one reason why His people had been chosen, in order to purge the land of false gods, so that truth may triumph there. This was one reason why He had set His love on them. So that they might punish the wickedness of the land, and establish there His righteous rule. Until idolatry was dealt with His sole rule could not begin.
7 “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them.
Moses speaks with confident assurance. He has no doubt that they will be able to possess the land, and that Yahweh will cast out many nations before them.
He lists seven of those nations. Seven is the number of divine perfection and here is basically indicating ‘all the nations in the land’ and the divine completeness of the intended destruction of them. ‘The Canaanites’ and ‘the Amorites’ were often terms for the general population of the country, so that the terms were often interchangeable. Each could be used for the inhabitants of the whole country. However there was sometimes some distinction, as here, in that often ‘the Canaanites’ was the term for those occupying the coastlands and the Jordan valley while ‘the Amorites’ could be seen as dwelling in the hill country east and west of Jordan.
3 Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.
They were not to intermarry with Canaanites. Thus all were to be slain or driven out, and none spared as captives or used for marriage purposes.
5 But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.
They were to destroy all the religious paraphernalia of the Canaanites. They must break down their altars, dash in pieces their pillars, hew down their Asherim idols and burn their graven images with fire. The pillars were stones set up to represent gods for worship purposes. These were not for the same purpose as Jacob had in mind when he set up a pillar in honor of Yahweh as a memorial (Genesis 28.18, 22), or like the memorial pillar mentioned by Isaiah 19.19, which was a symbol of belonging to Yahweh. They were seen as distinctly ‘divine’, the equivalent of graven images. The Asherim were either wooden poles or wooden images to represent the goddess Asherah. All were to be destroyed, removing all temptation to make use of them.
6 “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.
The reason why they must not fraternize with the Canaanites, but must destroy them or drive them out, was because they themselves were a holy people, a people set apart to Yahweh, a chosen people, chosen by God to be a people for His own treasured possession, in His eyes a people above all peoples which are on the face of the earth, a people on whom He had set His love (Exodus 19.5-6) It was for this purpose that Yahweh had delivered them.
Here we have the first specific mention in the book of the fact that they were a ‘chosen’ people, elect as a people at the hand of God for the fulfillment of His purposes. It was for this reason that He would endure with them to the end until He had formed a greater Israel through the message of His Son. But their being chosen originally began not with them, but with God choosing Abraham.
7 The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples;
In this passage the love and faithfulness of God is accentuated, and it is stressed that He loves them, not because they deserve it or were worthy, but simply because He has sovereignty set His love on them and also for their fathers’ sakes. Thus they can be sure that He will reveal His faithfulness by responding to those who are faithful to Him while repaying those who become unfaithful.
He stresses that Yahweh did not set His love on them or choose them because they were so many, or because they were a more numerous people than others, for they were not. That was the way men looked at things. When He had first chosen them they had been the fewest of all peoples, wandering through Canaan with their herds and flocks, seen as strangers passing by, and then settling in Egypt as a band of resident aliens. They were the weak, the foolish; the despised. It was nothing in them that had occasioned His love and choosing. It was rather an act of divine grace, of unmerited goodness and power, because they were descendants of, or had become connected with the descendants of, His faithful and beloved servant Abraham.
8 but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Yahweh chose them because He loved them. It was simply the determined act of God. It was true that it was for their father’s sakes, and then for their own sake because of their response to Him in the covenant, and because He was determined to keep His oath to their fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But over and above it all it was because He had chosen for His love to reach out to them. And that was why He had redeemed them out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
We too, if we are Christ’s, are chosen in His love. The thought that God has set His love on us from all eternity (Ephesians 1.4) can only humble us and yet flood our hearts with praise and gratitude and the Scripture makes quite plain that having chosen us and loved us He has justified us in Christ Jesus His Holy Son, and will raise us to final glorification (Romans 8.29-30). How then can we also fail to seek to fulfill all His commandments and rid ourselves of all that is displeasing to Him?
9 “Therefore know that the LORD your God, He Is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face.
By consideration of this they could know that Yahweh Is God He Is the Faithful God, faithful to His past covenants and to those on whom He has set His love in the past, and that He keeps covenant with and shows gracious mercy towards those who love Him and keep His commandments.
We need to take to heart that loving Him comes prior to the keeping of His commandments. The keeping of the commandments results from that love. This is not to be seen as abiding by strict rules out of fear of the consequences, but as lovingly responding to Yahweh’s requirements because they love Him for what He has done for them.
While on the one hand there is love and compassion, on the other there is aversion to sin and to those who reject His covenant, those who thus show that they ‘hate’ Him. These, such as the Canaanites, He will destroy. This fact is stressed. He is not slack about dealing with sin, He does it openly and readily in the face of the sinner. Therefore let all who would sin beware. There is no room in His land for sin.
11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.
Because our Great and Holy God Is compassionate and merciful to those who look to Him, and harsh with sinners, they are to keep His commandment, and the statutes and ordinances that He commands them this very day, as they will shortly be given.
12 “Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers.
The result of their listening to His ordinances and keeping them in their hearts, and doing them, will be that He, Yahweh their God, will keep His covenant with them, and will maintain the covenant love, the warm, responsive, gracious love, which He swore to their fathers. With God relationship is always two ways. Receiving mercy and love must result in responding with love and obedience. The two go together. One cannot exist without the other. The person who does not seek to serve Him has not experienced His love and mercy, for His love and mercy would have changed their hearts so that they did love and obey Him.
13 And He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you.
Look also at what His Great Love moves Him to add to all who respond to His Love. He will not only keep covenant, but He will truly love them, and bless them, and multiply them. He first made the covenant because He wanted to pour out His love. But He will also bless both the fruit of their bodies, in healthy and numerous offspring, and the fruit of their ground in abundant harvests. He will also bless their crops and their fruit trees, their grain, and their new wine, and their olive oil. He will bless the young that their cattle produce, and the same with their flocks. They too will prosper and be fruitful and multiply and bring forth in abundance. And all this in the land which He swore to their fathers to give them, the chosen land, the land intended for the righteous, the land watched over by Yahweh, the potential kingdom of Yahweh.
14 You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock.
Indeed they would be blessed more than all others. Not a single male or female would be barren, not one of their cattle would fail to produce in abundance. Their numbers and their prosperity would continue to grow and grow. All would be perfect. Here is the picture of abundant blessing, had they been fully faithful.
15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you.
In total obedience to Him they would suffer no sickness or disease. All the sickness that they had experienced and witnessed in Egypt would not trouble them. He will not put it on them; He will put it on those who hate them. One of the plagues involved painful boils which were prevalent in Egypt, along with afflictions of the eyes and bowels, to say nothing of more severe diseases.
16 Also you shall destroy all the peoples whom the LORD your God delivers over to you; your eye shall have no pity on them; nor shall you serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.
He repeats again the command in verses 2-4, which will further be repeated in verses 22-26. All this repetition is in order to drive it deep into their heads and hearts so that it becomes second nature to them (which sadly for their future it did not).
Positive living was to be accompanied by a resolute turning from sin. They were to consume all the peoples whom Yahweh delivered up to them. They were not to spare them. They were not to have compassion on them. Nor were they to spare their gods for this was Yahweh’s land, and only what was responsive to Him could be allowed to live there. If they failed in all this it would be a snare to them, a trap that would entice them to their own destruction.
There is the warning here that we too should continually search our hearts in order to ensure that no idol has possessed us and limited our love for Christ. It is true of us also that if sin is not dealt with, righteousness will not prosper. If it was so important that the land should be cleansed from all that was corrupt, how much more important is it for us that we too should remove from our lives all that corrupts. It is not enough to be positive. We must also root out all that is negative.
17 “If you should say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’— 18 you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: 19 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, by which the LORD your God brought you out. So shall the LORD your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.
Our Holy and All Wise God now makes allowance for their possible fears, for He Is aware of their weaknesses that so often reveal themselves. He acknowledges that they might well begin to fear, and ask how they can hope to cope with peoples more numerous than themselves, and better armed. He assures them that it is not a problem. They are not to be afraid. They are to remember what Yahweh did in Egypt to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, and the great trials and tests that their eyes saw, for Yahweh tried Pharaoh until Pharaoh broke and gave way. And they are to remember the signs and wonders, and the mighty hand and outstretched arm which Yahweh brought them out of Egypt. So will He do to all who oppose them, and all the people whom they have to meet, and of whom they are afraid?
20 Moreover the LORD your God will send the hornet among them until those who are left, who hide themselves from you, are destroyed.
For Yahweh will fight for them. He will send on their enemies all kinds of catastrophes, natural and otherwise, like the descent of hornets on unsuspecting people. It is possible that ‘send the hornet’ was a saying which signified promised catastrophe. One of these stinging insects is bad but can you imagine a whole swarm of them? Nothing is more fearful than a swarm of hornets. The result would be that those who were left would hide themselves, but it would do them no good. Their enemies would perish from before them. This promise was important. The point was that Yahweh had all kinds of ‘secret weapons’ that He could release which were not the normal weapons of warfare.
21 You shall not be terrified of them; for the LORD your God, the great and awesome God, is among you.
If their foe seemed terrible, let them consider how great and terrible their God Is.
22 And the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.
Yahweh is not unaware of the problems before them. He will certainly cast out the nations from before them. But He will not destroy these nations all at once. He will do it little by little. This is so that the land may not become totally unoccupied, and thus be taken over by a multitude of wild beasts. While initially the first thrust would be devastating, settlement of the whole land would take considerably longer, as the book of Joshua makes apparent. It could not just happen overnight. Settlement took time and effort. Of course, His people were not intended during this process to live among the Canaanites. Once they occupied each area of land, where ‘their feet stepped’, it had to be cleared of Canaanites. But it would take time. Meanwhile Canaanites would be allowed to live where Israel had not yet settled.
Why then did God not simply keep the wild beasts out? Had not Leviticus 26.6 said that He would remove savage beasts from the land? One answer is that He tends not to interfere in the workings of nature where it is not necessary. Men learn from facing the problems of life. Too easy a settlement would have led to sin all the quicker. Thus God even had a purpose in delaying the driving out of the Canaanites. This question is a complicated one. The delay was partly due to lethargy, disobedience and unbelief. But God turned it also to good purposes. It would teach them war (Judges 3.2), it would test whether they were willing to obey His commandments (Judges 3.4), and as here it would keep the land in good condition until they possessed it. And we must remember that Canaan was not just all open country. It was not easy to settle. The settling of a land like Canaan with its forests, and mountains, and plains and multiplicity of cities would take a great deal of effort and time. Israel had to learn how to live there gradually. Doing too much too soon would have been fatal.
23 But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, and will inflict defeat upon them until they are destroyed.
In the end He would deliver all their enemies up to them. He would discomfit them with great discomfiture until they were destroyed. He would ensure the eradication of evil from the land as long as they remained faithful.
24 And He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you will destroy their name from under heaven; no one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them.
Their kings would be able to do nothing about it. They might seem to Israel to be important and powerful but before Yahweh they would be helpless. They would be delivered into their hands and their names would perish.
25 You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God.
In receiving all this help they must remember His instructions. They were to burn their graven images with fire, totally and completely. They were not to look at the silver and gold on them, or covet it, or seek to take it for themselves for it could become a snare to them as they remembered where it came from. All of this was an abomination to Yahweh..
We too must remember that gold and silver might seem desirable, but if it comes at the cost of our love for God or makes us compromise it is too costly.
26 Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.
The Israelites and also we for that matter must understand that all believers must not bring an abomination into their residences. It was devoted to destruction. If anyone does so let them recognize that they might themselves become devoted to destruction, because they had taken what was ‘devoted to Yahweh’ into their residence. Rather they were to detest and abhor any such thing. Here we are reminded that as with holiness the contact with a ‘devoted’ thing can cause the one to be ‘devoted’ to destruction.
If only we would take these severe instructions to heart we might be more severe with sin in our own lives. It reminds us that sin must not be tolerated. It has to be rooted out. It has to be driven out. It has to be destroyed. Whenever we see anything in our lives that is interfering with His pre-eminence in our hearts we must not spare it. We must rid ourselves of it completely. Only then can Christ reign truly in our lives.
