When the Lord your God eliminates the nations from the place where you are headed and you dispossess them, you will settle down in their land.

When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn the abhorrent practices of those nations.

When the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land he is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses,

This is how you are to deal with all those cities located far from you, those that do not belong to these nearby nations.

Then he will elevate you above all the nations he has made and you will receive praise, fame, and honor. You will be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he has said.

“(For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we crossed through the nations as we traveled.

Then all the nations will ask, “Why has the Lord done all this to this land? What is this fierce, heated display of anger all about?”

You saw everything the Lord your God did to all these nations on your behalf, for the Lord your God fights for you.

But if you ever turn away and make alliances with these nations that remain near you, and intermarry with them and establish friendly relations with them,

So I will no longer remove before them any of the nations that Joshua left unconquered when he died.

These were the nations the Lord permitted to remain so he could use them to test Israel – he wanted to test all those who had not experienced battle against the Canaanites.

The Lord turned them over to King Jabin of Canaan, who ruled in Hazor. The general of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim.

They said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons don’t follow your ways. So now appoint over us a king to lead us, just like all the other nations have.”

King David dedicated these things to the Lord, along with the dedicated silver and gold that he had taken from all the nations that he had subdued,

He was wiser than any man, including Ethan the Ezrahite or Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol. He was famous in all the neighboring nations.

There were also male cultic prostitutes in the land. They committed the same horrible sins as the nations that the Lord had driven out from before the Israelites.

He followed in the footsteps of the kings of Israel. He passed his son through the fire, a horrible sin practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites.

they observed the practices of the nations whom the Lord had driven out from before Israel, and followed the example of the kings of Israel.

They were worshiping the Lord and at the same time serving their own gods in accordance with the practices of the nations from which they had been deported.

Were the nations whom my ancestors destroyed – the nations of Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden in Telassar – rescued by their gods?