What Does Deuteronomy 7:1 Mean?
When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you go to take hold of it, and drives out many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “possess” also carries the meanings “inherit” and “dispossess,” binding the promised gain to the expulsion named in this verse.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you with a promise whose stated path is entry into a land and the expulsion of seven peoples. It names each people and says they are greater and mightier than you, holding the forceful removal and the imbalance of strength in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a promised inheritance is only a gift, with no people being dispossessed, dissolves here: the verse names those who are driven out.
THE ROOT
לְרִשְׁתָּהּ
lerishtah
GROWS FROM
ירש
yarash
To take possession; inherit or dispossess.
“take hold of it” in this verse is lerishtah. Beneath “possess,” the root also carries “inherit” and “dispossess.” One seed therefore holds receiving and removal together, and this verse explicitly joins the promised land to the expulsion of the peoples named.
ALSO GROWS
yerushah: Inheritance, possession.
יְרֻשָּׁה
This noun names what is received as an inheritance, joining the verse’s taking of possession to the language of receiving.
morashah: Possession, inheritance.
מוֹרָשָׁה
This related noun carries the same inheritance sense, while the verse makes the means of occupying the land explicit.
יְבִיאֲךָ
yeviakha
GROWS FROM
בוא
bo
To come, enter, or arrive; in its causative form, to bring someone into a place.
The Hebrew verb is the causative form of the root for “come” or “enter,” so “bring” means causing arrival. The verse pairs that arrival with your own going into the land, making entry the hinge between divine action and possession.
ALSO GROWS
bo: To come, enter, or arrive.
בּוֹא
This verb names the movement into a place that underlies the verse’s “bring thee into the land.”
mavo: Entrance, entryway.
מָבוֹא
This noun names a point of entry, bringing out the threshold crossed before possession begins.
THE PATTERN
Inheritance is described as arrival at and receipt of a place; here, the verse makes the expulsion accompanying that possession explicit.
And he said to him, I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to take hold of it.The Horim also settled in Seir in former days; but the children of Esau drove them out, and destroyed them from before them, and settled in their place; as Israel did to the land of his possession, which the LORD gave to them.By trust Abraham, called to go out into a place he would receive as an inheritance, heard and responded, and went out, not knowing where he was going.THE THREAD
Hear and respond, O Israel. You are crossing over the Jordan this day, to go in and possess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and walled in rock to the heavens.The verb translated “possess” comes from the same root here, and the comparison with nations greater and mightier returns. Together, the verses keep inheritance concrete: a place, stronger peoples in it, and the forceful removal named in Deuteronomy 7:1.
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