He, ¹  the God who leads you, will expel the nations little by little. You will not be allowed to destroy them all at once lest the wild animals overrun you.

“You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it.

It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you – for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples.

There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, ¹  because you will have disobeyed ²  the Lord your God.

Then you must affirm before the Lord your God, “A wandering ¹  Aramean ²  was my ancestor, ³  and he went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with a household few in number, ⁴  but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous people.