2. Thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them. Those who think that there was cruelty in this command, usurp too great authority in respect to Him who is the judge of all.

6. For thou art a holy people. He explains more distinctly what we have lately seen respecting God’s gratuitous love; for the comparison of the fewness of the people with the whole world and all nations, illustrates in no trifling degree the greatness of God’s grace; and this subject is…

7. The Lord did not set his love upon you. He proves it to be of God’s gratuitous favor, that He has exalted them to such high honor, because He had passed over all other nations, and deigned to embrace them alone.

8. Because he would keep the oath. The love of God is here referred back from the children to the fathers; for he addressed the men of his own generation, when he said that they were therefore God’s treasure, because He loved them; now he adds that God had not just begun to love them for the first…

9. Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God. The verb might have been as properly translated in the future tense; and, if this be preferred, an experimental knowledge, as it is called, is referred to, as if he had said that God would practically manifest how faithful a rewarder He is of His…

10. And repayeth them that hate him. There is no mention here made of the vengeance “unto the third and fourth generation? Those who expound the passage that God confers kindnesses on the wicked, whilst they are living in this world, that He may at length destroy them in final perdition, wrest the…

12. Wherefore it shall come to pass. God appears so to act according to agreement, as to leave (His people) no hope of His favor, unless they perform their part of it; and undoubtedly this is the usual form of expression in the Law, in which the condition is inserted, that God will do good to His…

16. And thou shalt consume all the people. It is plain from the second part of the verse wherefore He commands the people of Canaan to be destroyed, when He forbids their gods to be worshipped.

20. Moreover, the Lord thy God will send the hornet. Since the destruction of their enemies might seem long, if they were only to be slain by their hands and weapons, and again, because it was scarcely credible that, without defending themselves, they would voluntarily stretch forth their own…

25. The graven images of their gods. He again impresses upon them the object of the destruction of the nations, but he goes further than before. He had before forbidden them to worship their gods.