2 The Lord your God will hand these nations over to you, and when you defeat them, you must destroy them completely. Do not make a peace treaty with them or show them any mercy.
3 Do not marry any of them, or let your daughters marry their sons, or let your sons marry their daughters.
4 If you do, those people will turn your children away from me, to begin serving other gods. Then the Lord will be very angry with you, and he will quickly destroy you.
5 This is what you must do to those people: Tear down their altars, smash their holy stone pillars, cut down their Asherah idols, and burn their idols in the fire.
6 You are holy people who belong to the Lord your God. He has chosen you from all the people on earth to be his very own.
7 The Lord did not care for you and choose you because there were many of you—you are the smallest nation of all.
8 But the Lord chose you because he loved you, and he kept his promise to your ancestors. So he brought you out of Egypt by his great power and freed you from the land of slavery, from the power of the king of Egypt.