When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to possess, and He drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you to defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, because they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and He will swiftly destroy you. Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire.
Observe what I command you this day. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Be careful not to make a treaty with the inhabitants of the land you are entering, lest they become a snare in your midst. Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles. For you must not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices. And when you take some of their daughters as brides for your sons, their daughters will prostitute themselves to their gods and cause your sons to do the same.
Significance
Deuteronomy 7:1-5 is Moses on the plains of Moab reworking the covenant charter God gave at Sinai in Exodus 34:11-16. The tightest contact is Deuteronomy 7:5 against Exodus 34:13, which share five lexemes in the same sequence: נתץ (natats, "tear down") + מִזְבֵּחַ (mizbeach, "altars") + שׁבר (shabar, "smash") + מַצֵּבָה (matstsebah, "sacred pillars") + אֲשֵׁרָה (asherah). Deuteronomy substitutes גדע (gada', "cut down") where Exodus has כרת (karat, "chop down"), and then adds a fourth command Exodus does not have — burn their carved images (פְּסִילִים, pesilim) in the fire. Around that clause the rest is expansion: the nation list grows from six to seven with the Girgashites added; the "make no covenant with them" of Exodus 34:12,15 becomes Deuteronomy 7:2; and Exodus 34:16's one-way warning about taking their daughters for your sons becomes Deuteronomy 7:3's two-way prohibition. The Reference Type is Allusion rather than Direct Quotation because, apart from that one clause, Deuteronomy restates rather than cites.
Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Longitudinal Theme
The reason given is identical in both, and it is not ethnic: "they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods" (Deuteronomy 7:4); "their daughters will prostitute themselves to their gods and cause your sons to do the same" (Exodus 34:16). The threat is apostasy, and the ground of the demand is stated between the two texts: "the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34:14). That jealousy is marital, not petty — it is the refusal of a husband to hold half a wife's heart, and it runs forward through Hosea to Paul's "I promised you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:2) and to the marriage supper of Revelation 19:7-9.
What Israel could not do — Judges 1-2 records the altars left standing — Christ does from the inside. He does not merely forbid the alliance with idols; He breaks it, cleansing His bride "by the washing with water through the word, to present her to Himself as a glorious church, without stain or wrinkle" (Ephesians 5:25-27). The charter's severity is finally good news: a God who will not share His people is a God whose love for them is not casual.
