Deuteronomy 7:12

"And it shall come to pass, because ye hearken to these ordinances, and keep and do them, that Jehovah thy God will keep with thee the covenant and the lovingkindness which he sware unto thy fathers: and he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee; he will also bless the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy ground, thy grain and thy new wine and thine oil, the increase of thy cattle and the young of thy flock, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee. Thou shalt be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle. And Jehovah will take away from thee all sickness; and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, will he put upon thee, but will lay them upon all them that hate thee. And thou shalt consume all the peoples that Jehovah thy God shall deliver unto thee; thine eye shall not pity them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee."

Physical and material prosperity were the rewards promised to the covenant people of the O.T. Great as these rewards assuredly were, the spiritual rewards of the new covenant are far superior. Also, the N.T. abundantly teaches that many of the old physical and material rewards of the O.T. are likewise given unto the faithful under the new covenant. Has not God promised to be with His people, "always, even unto the end of the world?"

A significant aspect of the teaching here regarding the fruitfulness of body, land, cattle, etc., is that all such fruitfulness is attributed to God alone, and this is just the opposite of the claims of the cultists of Canaan who attributed the fruitfulness of their fields and the fertility of themselves and of their cattle to their sex gods and goddesses which they worshipped with such abominable rites.

Wonderful as the grace of God assuredly is, it should be noted that all of the blessings here promised were contingent, absolutely, upon Israel's fidelity to the holy covenant. "Even the elect, may become faithless, and so become reprobate!"[27] Thus, it came about that 24,000 of the elect who came up out of Egypt committed fornication in a single day, lost their lives, and, of course, were denied entry into Canaan. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." (1 Corinthians 10:12).

Deuteronomy 7:13. There is a very strange thing in this verse, in that the Hebrew word for ewes "is the plural form of Ashtoreth. This goddess, called by the classical writers Astarte, is identified with Venus, and represents the fruitfulness of nature."[28]

Deuteronomy 7:15. This has God's promise that He would protect Israel against the diseases with which He had afflicted the Egyptians. This corresponds to the promise God had made previously in Exodus 15:26. As to what those diseases were, Davies identified these as: "dysentery, elephantiasis, and ophthalmia";[29] and to these Jamieson added, "smallpox and the plague."[30] It is amazing that in this verse disease appears as something that God sent upon sinful people as punishment. In harmony with that view, a number of respected medical authorities have expressed the opinion that the dreadful malady - AIDS - is a direct judgment of God upon the sin with which the disease is undoubtedly associated.[31]

"That will be a snare unto thee ..." (Deuteronomy 7:16). The Hebrew Scriptures have many references to the devices by which men captured animals and birds, and "snare" is surely one of the favorite metaphors of the sacred writers.

"It was a noose made of hair for small birds, and of wire for larger birds. The snares were set in a favorable location and grain was scattered to attract the feathered creatures. The birds accepted the bribe of good feeding and walked into the snare not suspecting any danger. For this reason, the snare became particularly applicable to describing a tempting bribe offered by men in order to lead their fellows into trouble."[32]

There are at least fifteen Biblical instances of the use of this remarkable metaphor.