3. Never marry any of them. Never let your daughters marry their sons or your sons marry their daughters.
4. These people will turn your children away from me to worship other gods. Then the Lord will get very angry with you and will quickly destroy you.
5. But this is what you must do to these people: Tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah, and burn their idols.
6. You are a holy people, who belong to the Lord your God. He chose you to be his own special possession out of all the nations on earth.
7. The Lord set his heart on you and chose you, even though you didn’t outnumber all the other people. You were the smallest of all nations.
8. You were chosen because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors. So he used his mighty hand to bring you out. He freed you from slavery under Pharaoh (the king of Egypt).
9. Keep in mind that the Lord your God is ⌊the only⌋ God. He is a faithful God, who keeps his promise and is merciful to thousands of generations of those who love him and obey his commands.