Exodus 34:10

34:10 He said, “See, I am going to make ¹  a covenant before all your people. I will do wonders such as have not been done ²  in all the earth, nor in any nation. All the people among whom you live will see the work of the Lord, for it is a fearful thing that I am doing with you. ³ 

Exodus 34:12

34:12 Be careful not to make ⁴  a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it become a snare ⁵  among you.

Exodus 23:32

23:32 “You must make no covenant with them or with their gods.

Deuteronomy 7:2

7:2 and he ⁶  delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate ⁷  them. Make no treaty ⁸  with them and show them no mercy!

¹ tn Here again is a use of the futur instans participle; the deictic particle plus the pronoun precedes the participle, showing what is about to happen.

² tn The verb here is בָּרָא (bara’, “to create”). The choice of this verb is to stress that these wonders would be supernaturally performed, for the verb is used only with God as the subject.

³ sn The idea is that God will be doing awesome things in dealing with them, i.e., to fulfill his program.

⁴ tn The exact expression is “take heed to yourself lest you make.” It is the second use of this verb in the duties, now in the Niphal stem. To take heed to yourself means to watch yourself, be sure not to do something. Here, if they failed to do this, they would end up making entangling treaties.

⁵ sn A snare would be a trap, an allurement to ruin. See Exod 23:33.

⁶ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

⁷ tn In the Hebrew text the infinitive absolute before the finite verb emphasizes the statement. The imperfect has an obligatory nuance here. Cf. ASV “shalt (must NRSV) utterly destroy them”; CEV “must destroy them without mercy.”

⁸ tn Heb “covenant” (so NASB, NRSV); TEV “alliance.”