1 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, ^mthe Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction.^{1 n}You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. 3 ^oYou shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you ^pquickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: ^qyou shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.

16 But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, ^tyou shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall ^udevote them to complete destruction,¹ the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, 18 ^vthat they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God.