Discovery BoxDeuteronomy 7:12-18 
Context7:12 If you obey these ordinances and are careful to do them, the Lord your God will faithfully keep covenant with you 1 as he promised 2 your ancestors. 7:13 He will love and bless you, and make you numerous. He will bless you with many children, 3 with the produce of your soil, your grain, your new wine, your oil, the offspring of your oxen, and the young of your flocks in the land which he promised your ancestors to give you. 7:14 You will be blessed beyond all peoples; there will be no barrenness 4 among you or your livestock. 7:15 The Lord will protect you from all sickness, and you will not experience any of the terrible diseases that you knew in Egypt; instead he will inflict them on all those who hate you.
7:16 You must destroy 5 all the people whom the Lord your God is about to deliver over to you; you must not pity them or worship 6 their gods, for that will be a snare to you. 7:17 If you think, “These nations are more numerous than I – how can I dispossess them?” 7:18 you must not fear them. You must carefully recall 7 what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt,
1 tn Heb “will keep with you the covenant and loyalty.” On the construction used here, see v. 9.
2 tn Heb “which he swore on oath.” The relative pronoun modifies “covenant,” so one could translate “will keep faithfully the covenant (or promise) he made on oath to your ancestors.”
3 tn Heb “will bless the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).
4 sn One of the ironies about the promises to the patriarchs concerning offspring was the characteristic barrenness of the wives of the men to whom these pledges were made (cf. Gen 11:30; 25:21; 29:31). Their affliction is in each case described by the very Hebrew word used here (עֲקָרָה, ’aqarah), an affliction that will no longer prevail in Canaan.
5 tn Heb “devour” (so NRSV); KJV, NAB, NASB “consume.” The verbal form (a perfect with vav consecutive) is understood here as having an imperatival or obligatory nuance (cf. the instructions and commands that follow). Another option is to take the statement as a continuation of the preceding conditional promises and translate “and you will destroy.”
6 tn Or “serve” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV).
7 tn Heb “recalling, you must recall.” The Hebrew text uses the infinitive absolute before the finite verb for emphasis. Cf. KJV, ASV “shalt well remember.”
