Exodus 34: 10-17, “And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee. Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.”
After the sin was confessed and dealt with the Lord met with Moses and then the Lord reminded Moses of the covenant, contract, that He made with Israel. He promised that He would do things that no one on the earth had ever seen before. In fact, the Lord had already done something that no one had ever seen before: He took Israel from slavery and established them as a nation in their own right. However, it was one thing for the Lord to take Israel from slavery and leave them in the desert, it was another thing for the Lord to give them a fruitful land with a functioning economy. The Lord already promised Abraham that He would give Israel the Land of Canaan but He waited in grace for the Canaanites to follow Him rather than following their old fertility religion. The Lord drove these people out of the Land because they had thoroughly debased the Land through their religious practices. This was why the Lord wanted them to have nothing to do with their religion. If they left the remnant of that religion in their Land there would always be a temptation to go after their ways and reject their True God, Who had delivered them from slavery. They were not even to intermarry with those people. When people marry from different religious backgrounds it is hard for each person to give up the things that they have done from childhood. In the end they will find some kind of compromise and this will lead to compromise in worshipping the Lord. However, there is only One True God and there is no room for compromise.
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
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