Exodus 23:23

23:23 For my angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will destroy them completely. 1 

Exodus 23:28-33

23:28 I will send 2  hornets before you that will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite before you. 23:29 I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals 3  multiply against you. 23:30 Little by little 4  I will drive them out before you, until you become fruitful and inherit the land. 23:31 I will set 5  your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River, 6  for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.

23:32 “You must make no covenant with them or with their gods. 23:33 They must not live in your land, lest they make you sin against me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare 7  to you.”

1 tn Heb “will cut them off” (so KJV, ASV).

2 tn Heb “and I will send.”

3 tn Heb “the beast of the field.”

4 tn The repetition expresses an exceptional or super-fine quality (see GKC 396 §123.e).

5 tn The form is a perfect tense with vav consecutive.

6 tn In the Hebrew Bible “the River” usually refers to the Euphrates (cf. NASB, NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT). There is some thought that it refers to a river Nahr el Kebir between Lebanon and Syria. See further W. C. Kaiser, Jr., “Exodus,” EBC 2:447; and G. W. Buchanan, The Consequences of the Covenant (NovTSup), 91-100.

7 tn The idea of the “snare” is to lure them to judgment; God is apparently warning about contact with the Canaanites, either in worship or in business. They were very syncretistic, and so it would be dangerous to settle among them.