เฉลยธรรมบัญญัติ 7:1 วิจารณ์

Moses in this chapter exhorts Israel, I. In general, to keep God's commandments (Deu 7:11, Deu 7:12). II. In particular, and in order to that, to keep themselves pure from all communion with idolaters. 1. They must utterly destroy the seven devoted nations, and not spare them, or make leagues with them (Deu 7:1, Deu 7:2, Deu 7:16, Deu 7:24). 2. They must by no means marry with the remainders of them (Deu 7:3, Deu 7:4). 3. They must deface and consume their altars and images, and not so much as take the silver and gold of them to their own use (Deu 7:5, Deu 7:25, Deu 7:26). To enforce this charge, he shows that they were bound to do so, (1.) In duty. Considering [1.] Their election to God (Deu 7:6). [2.] The reason of that election (Deu 7:7, Deu 7:8). [3.] The terms they stood upon with God (Deu 7:9, Deu 7:10). (2.) In interest. It is here promised, [1.] In general, that, if they would serve God, he would bless and prosper them (Deu 7:12-15). [2.] In particular, that if they would drive out the nations, that they might not be a temptation to them, God would drive them out, that they should not be any vexation to them (Deu 7:17, etc.).

Here is, I. A very strict caution against all friendship and fellowship with idols and idolaters. Those that are taken into communion with God must have no communication with the unfruitful works of darkness. These things they are charged about for the preventing of this snare now before them. 1. They must show them no mercy, Deu 7:1, Deu 7:2. Bloody work is here appointed them, and yet it is God's work, and good work, and in its time and place needful, acceptable, and honourable. (1.) God here engages to do his part. It is spoken of as a thing taken for granted that God would bring them into the land of promise, that he would cast out the nations before them, who were the present occupants of that land; no room was left to doubt of that. His power is irresistible, and therefore he can do it; his promise is inviolable, and therefore he will do it. Now, [1.] These devoted nations are here named and numbered (Deu 7:1), seven in all, and seven to one are great odds. They are specified, that Israel might know the bounds and limits of their commission: hitherto their severity must come, but no further; nor must they, under colour of this commission, kill all that came in their way; no, here must its waves be stayed. The confining of this commission to the nations here mentioned plainly intimates that after-ages were not to draw this into a precedent; this will not serve to justify those barbarous laws which give no quarter. How agreeable soever this method might be, when God himself prescribed it, to that dispensation under which such multitudes of beasts were killed and burned in sacrifice, now that all sacrifices of atonement are perfected in, and superseded by, the great propitiation made by the blood of Christ, human blood has become perhaps more precious than it was, and those that have most power yet must not be prodigal of it. [2.] They are here owned to be greater and mightier than Israel. They had been long rooted in this land, to which Israel came strangers; they were more numerous, had men much more bulky and more expert in war than Israel had; yet all this shall not prevent their being cast out before Israel. The strength of Israel's enemies magnifies the power of Israel's God, who will certainly be too hard for them. (2.) He engages them to do their part. Thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them, Deu 7:2. If God cast them out, Israel must not take them in, no, not as tenants, nor tributaries, nor servants. Not covenant of any kind must be made with them, no mercy must be shown them. This severity was appointed, [1.] By way of punishment for the wickedness they and their fathers had been guilty of. The iniquity of the Amorites was now full, and the longer it had been in the filling the sorer was the vengeance when it came at last. [2.] In order to prevent the mischiefs they would do to God's Israel if they were left alive. The people of these abominations must not be mingled with the holy seed, lest they corrupt them. Better that all these lives should be lost from the earth than that religion and the true worship of God should be lost in Israel. Thus we must deal with our lusts that was against our souls; God has delivered them into our hands by that promise, Sin shall not have dominion over you, unless it be your own faults; let not us them make covenants with them, nor show them any mercy, but mortify and crucify them, and utterly destroy them. 2. They must make no marriages with those of them that escaped the sword, Deu 7:3, Deu 7:4. The families of the Canaanites were ancient, and it is probable that some of them were called honourable, which might be a temptation to the Israelites, especially those of them that were of least note in their tribes, to court an alliance with them, to ennoble their blood; and the rather because their acquaintance with the country might be serviceable to them in the improvement of it: but religion, and the fear of God, must overrule all these considerations. To intermarry with them was therefore unlawful, because it was dangerous; this very thing had proved of fatal consequence to the old world (Gen 6:2), and thousands in the world that now is have been undone by irreligious ungodly marriages; for there is more ground of fear in mixed marriages that the good will be perverted than of hope that the bad will be converted. The event proved the reasonableness of this warning: They will turn away thy son from following me. Solomon paid dearly for his folly herein. We find a national repentance for this sin of marrying strange wives, and care taken to reform (Ezr 9:1-15, 10; and Neh. 13), and a New Testament caution not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, Co2 6:14. Those that in choosing yokefellows keep not at least within the bounds of a justifiable profession of religion cannot promise themselves helps meet for them. One of the Chaldee paraphrases adds here, as a reason of this command (Deu 7:3), For he that marries with idolaters does in effect marry with their idols. 3. They must destroy all the relics of their idolatry, Deu 7:5. Their altars and pillars, their groves and graven images, all must be destroyed, both in a holy indignation against idolatry and to prevent infection. This command was given before, Exo 23:24; Exo 34:13. A great deal of good work of this kind was done by the people, in their pious zeal (Ch2 31:1), and by good Josiah (Ch2 34:3, Ch2 34:7), and with this may be compared the burning of the conjuring books, Act 19:19. II. Here are very good reasons to enforce this caution. 1. The choice which God had made of this people for his own, Deu 7:6. There was such a covenant and communion established between God and Israel as was not between him and any other people in the world. Shall they by their idolatries dishonour him who had thus honoured them? Shall they slight him who had thus testified his kindness for them? Shall they put themselves upon the level with other people, when God had thus dignified and advanced them above all people? Had God taken them to be a special people to him, and no other but them, and will not they take God to be a special God to them, and no other but him? 2. The freeness of that grace which made this choice. (1.) There was nothing in them to recommend or entitle them to this favour. In multitude of the people is the king's honour, Pro 14:28. But their number was inconsiderable; they were only seventy souls when they went down into Egypt, and, though greatly increased there, yet there were many other nations more numerous: You were the fewest of all people, Deu 7:7. The author of the Jerusalem Targum passes too great a compliment upon his nation in his reading this, You were humble in spirit, and meek above all people; quite contrary: they were rather stiff-necked and ill-natured above all people. (2.) God fetched the reason of it purely from himself, Deu 7:8. [1.] He loved you because he would love you. Even so, Father, because it seemed good in thy eyes. All that God loves he loves freely, Hos 14:4. Those that perish perish by their own merits, but all that are saved are saved by prerogative. [2.] He has done his work because he would keep his word. "He has brought you out of Egypt in pursuance of the oath sworn to your fathers." Nothing in them, or done by them, did or could make God a debtor to them; but he had made himself a debtor to his own promise, which he would perform notwithstanding their unworthiness. 3. The tenour of the covenant into which they were taken; it was in short this, That as they were to God so God would be to them. They should certainly find him, (1.) Kind to his friends, Deu 7:9. "The Lord thy God is not like the gods of the nations, the creatures of fancy, subjects fit enough for loose poetry, but no proper objects of serious devotion; no, he is God, God indeed, God alone, the faithful God, able and ready not only to fulfil his own promises, but to answer all the just expectations of his worshippers, and he will certainly keep covenant and mercy," that is, "show mercy according to covenant, to those that love him and keep his commandments" (and in vain do we pretend to love him if we do not make conscience of his commandments); "and this" (as is here added for the explication of the promise in the second commandment) "not only to thousands of persons, but to thousands of generations - so inexhaustible is the fountain, so constant are the streams!" (2.) Just to his enemies: He repays those that hate him, Deu 7:10. Note, [1.] Wilful sinners are haters of God; for the carnal mind is enmity against him. Idolaters are so in a special manner, for they are in league with his rivals. [2.] Those that hate God cannot hurt him, but certainly ruin themselves. He will repay them to their face, in defiance of them and all their impotent malice. His arrows are said to be made ready against the face of them, Psa 21:12. Or, He will bring those judgments upon them which shall appear to themselves to be the just punishment of their idolatry. Compare Job 21:19, He rewardeth him, and he shall know it. Though vengeance seem to be slow, yet it is not slack. The wicked and sinner shall be recompensed in the earth, Pro 11:31. I cannot pass the gloss of the Jerusalem Targum upon this place, because it speaks the faith of the Jewish church concerning a future state: He recompenses to those that hate him the reward of their good works in this world, that he may destroy them in the world to come.

INTRODUCTION TO DEUTERONOMY 7 In this chapter the Israelites are exhorted to destroy the seven nations of the land of Canaan, when they entered into it, and to make no alliances with them of any kind, nor suffer any remains of idolatry to continue, Deu 7:1 to observe which, and other commands of God, they are urged from the consideration of their being freely chosen of God above all other people, and of their being redeemed out of the house of bondage, and of the Lord's being a covenant keeping God to them, Deu 7:6 and it is promised them, for their further encouragement to keep the commands of God, that they should have an increase of all temporal good things, and no evils and calamities should come upon them, Deu 6:12, and, lest they should be disheartened at the numbers and might of their enemies, they are put in mind of what God had done for them in Egypt, and of what he had promised to do for them now, Deu 7:17 and they are assured that the nations should be cast out before them by little and little, until they were utterly destroyed, Deu 7:21 and the chapter is concluded with an exhortation to destroy their images, and not admit anything of that sort to be brought into their houses, Deu 7:25.

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it,.... The land of Canaan they were just now going into to take possession of; their introduction into which is here, as in many other places, ascribed not to themselves, or their leaders, but to the Lord as their covenant God: and hath cast out many nations before thee; even all that were in it, the seven following: the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites; the Canaanites were a particular nation in the land of Canaan, which had their name from Canaan himself; the rest were called from different sons of his; see Gen 10:15, the country of the Gergesenes, the same with the Girgashites, continued its name unto the times of Christ, Mat 8:28, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; more in number, and more robust in body, some being of a gigantic stature; there were ten of these nations in Abraham's time, three of them were since sunk or swallowed up among the rest, the Kenites, and Kenizires, and the Rephaim; for instead of the Kadmonites the Hivites are here put, which seem to be the same.

These are the seven nations whose lands the Lord promised to give to the children of Israel when they left Egypt. We must accept the fact that, according to the apostle, all the things that happened to them in a figure were written for our instruction.… The reason that they are said to be much more numerous is that there are more vices than virtues. Therefore in the list they are counted as seven nations, to be sure, but when it is a question of destroying them they are said to be innumerable.

ALL COMMUNION WITH THE NATIONS FORBIDDEN. (Deu. 7:1-26) the Hittites--This people were descended from Heth, the second son of Canaan (Gen 10:15), and occupied the mountainous region about Hebron, in the south of Palestine. the Girgashites--supposed by some to be the same as the Gergesenes (Mat 8:28), who lay to the east of Lake Gennesareth; but they are placed on the west of Jordan (Jos 24:11), and others take them for a branch of the large family of the Hivites, as they are omitted in nine out of ten places where the tribes of Canaan are enumerated; in the tenth they are mentioned, while the Hivites are not. the Amorites--descended from the fourth son of Canaan. They occupied, besides their conquest on the Moabite territory, extensive settlements west of the Dead Sea, in the mountains. the Canaanites--located in Phœnicia, particularly about Tyre and Sidon, and being sprung from the oldest branch of the family of Canaan, bore his name. the Perizzites--that is, villagers, a tribe who were dispersed throughout the country and lived in unwalled towns. the Hivites--who dwelt about Ebal and Gerizim, extending towards Hermon. They are supposed to be the same as the Avims. the Jebusites--resided about Jerusalem and the adjacent country. seven nations greater and mightier than thou--Ten were formerly mentioned (Gen 15:19-21). But in the lapse of near five hundred years, it cannot be surprising that some of them had been extinguished in the many intestine feuds that prevailed among those warlike tribes. It is more than probable that some, stationed on the east of Jordan, had fallen under the victorious arms of the Israelites.

As the Israelites were warned against idolatry in Deu 6:14, so here are they exhorted to beware of the false tolerance of sparing the Canaanites and enduring their idolatry. - Deu 7:1, Deu 7:5. When the Lord drove out the tribes of Canaan before the Israelites, and gave them up to them and smote them, they were to put them under the ban (see at Lev 27:28), to make no treaty with them, and to contract no marriage with them. נשׁל, to draw out, to cast away, e.g., the sandals (Exo 3:5); here and Deu 7:22 it signifies to draw out, or drive out a nation from its country and possessions: it occurs in this sense in the Piel in Kg2 16:6. On the Canaanitish tribes, see at Gen 10:15. and Deu 15:20-21. There are seven of them mentioned here, as in Jos 3:10 and Jos 24:11; on the other hand, there are only six in Deu 20:17, as in Exo 3:8, Exo 3:17; Exo 23:23, and Exo 33:2, the Girgashites being omitted. The prohibition against making a covenant, as in Exo 23:32 and Exo 34:12, and that against marrying, as in Exo 34:16, where the danger of the Israelites being drawn away to idolatry is mentioned as a still further reason for these commands. יסיר כּי, "for he (the Canaanite) will cause thy son to turn away from behind me," i.e., tempt him away from following me, "to serve other gods." Moses says "from following me," because he is speaking in the name of Jehovah. The consequences of idolatry, as in Deu 6:15; Deu 4:26, etc.