Deuteronomy 7:6

"For thou art a holy people unto Jehovah thy God: Jehovah thy God hath chosen thee to be a people for his own possession, above all the peoples that are upon the face of the earth. Jehovah did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all peoples: but because Jehovah loveth you, and because he would keep the covenant which he sware unto your fathers, hath Jehovah brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that Jehovah thy God, he is God, the faithful God, who keepeth covenant and lovingkindness with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations, and repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. Thou shalt therefore keep the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which I command thee this day to do them."

"To be a people for his own possession ..." The Septuagint (LXX) renders this, "to be a peculiar people above all the nations that are upon the face of the earth." This is translated exactly the same way in 1 Peter 2:9.

"Because the Lord loved you ..." (Deuteronomy 7:8). Alexander's comment on this is:

"Instead of saying, he hath chosen you out of love to your fathers, as in Deuteronomy 4:37, Moses brings out in this place love to the people of Israel as the Divine motive, not for choosing Israel, but for leading it out and delivering it from the slave-house in Egypt."[21]

The word "love" in such passages does not indicate an emotional state such as is normally associated with the word. It merely means "doing right by," or "honoring his promises to" Israel. Jacob loved Rachel and hated Leah, in the emotional sense, but he surely "loved" Leah also in the sense of fulfilling his duty toward her, for she was the mother of six of the Twelve Patriarchs.

"The faithful God ..." (Deuteronomy 7:9). Davies properly understood this as being equivalent to "the true God," the only God, quoting 4:37 as supporting this.[22]

A few thoughts on the faithfulness of God are in order. In putting Israel into possession of Canaan so many centuries after the promise to Abraham, and at such cost in miracle and divine manipulation of human events, "God gave Israel irrefragable proof of His covenant-keeping faithfulness."[23] Just look at what God did:

1. He promised Abraham to deliver Canaan to his seed.

2. When it became apparent that the Israelites would be swept into unity with the pagan nations around them (in the times of Judah), he arranged to make Israel unpopular by moving the whole nation of the keepers of sheep into Egypt, where they were despised. There they became a cohesive, strong, and powerful people, and were enslaved.

3. Against the mightiest nation on earth, God delivered His judgments in the form of ten great plagues, delivered the people across the Red Sea, drowning Pharaoh and his whole army at the same time.

4. He nourished and guided them in the wilderness, in spite of their repeated rebellions.

5. And NOW, some half-a-millennium later, He will actually deliver Canaan to the children of Abraham as He had promised so many centuries earlier! No wonder He is referred to here by Moses as "the faithful God."

"He will repay him to his face ..." (Deuteronomy 7:10). Alexander gave the meaning of this unusual clause thus: "It means openly, manifestly, during this present life, and so that the hater of God should know and feel that he had been smitten of God."[24] The principle that God will indeed speedily avenge Himself upon His enemies (and it would seem especially upon those enemies who are in some way an actual threat to the kingdom of God) is taught unequivocally in the N.T., as well as here. A very similar promise is in Luke 18:7, a passage which Dummelow affirmed "was literally fulfilled in the calamities which overtook the Jews and the heathen persecutors of the early Christians."[25] Lactantius has twenty pages of the most interesting events concerning the awful punishments, judgments, and miseries, which befell the famed persecutors of the church, namely, Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, Diocletian, etc."[26]