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.