Discovery BoxExodus 23:29-33 
Context23:29 I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals 1 multiply against you. 23:30 Little by little 2 I will drive them out before you, until you become fruitful and inherit the land. 23:31 I will set 3 your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River, 4 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 5 to you.”
1 tn Heb “the beast of the field.”
2 tn The repetition expresses an exceptional or super-fine quality (see GKC 396 §123.e).
3 tn The form is a perfect tense with vav consecutive.
4 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.
5 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.
