It is not because you are good and do what is right that the LORD is letting you take their land. He will drive them out because they are wicked and because he intends to keep the promise that he made to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

"The LORD did not love you and choose you because you outnumbered other peoples; you were the smallest nation on earth.

But the LORD loved you and wanted to keep the promise that he made to your ancestors. That is why he saved you by his great might and set you free from slavery to the king of Egypt.

So then, you must never think that you have made yourselves wealthy by your own power and strength.

"Now then, give the Israelites the message that I, the Sovereign LORD, have for them: What I am going to do is not for the sake of you Israelites, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have disgraced in every country where you have gone.

Israel, I want you to know that I am not doing all this for your sake. I want you to feel the shame and disgrace of what you are doing. I, the Sovereign LORD, have spoken."

His choice is based on his grace, not on what they have done. For if God's choice were based on what people do, then his grace would not be real grace.

That is true. They were broken off because they did not believe, while you remain in place because you do believe. But do not be proud of it; instead, be afraid.

My conscience is clear, but that does not prove that I am really innocent. The Lord is the one who passes judgment on me.

Who made you superior to others? Didn't God give you everything you have? Well, then, how can you boast, as if what you have were not a gift?

But God's mercy is so abundant, and his love for us is so great,

that while we were spiritually dead in our disobedience he brought us to life with Christ. It is by God's grace that you have been saved.

He saved us and called us to be his own people, not because of what we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace. He gave us this grace by means of Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, and wrong. We were slaves to passions and pleasures of all kinds. We spent our lives in malice and envy; others hated us and we hated them.

he saved us. It was not because of any good deeds that we ourselves had done, but because of his own mercy that he saved us, through the Holy Spirit, who gives us new birth and new life by washing us.

Do not worship the LORD your God in the way they worship their gods, for in the worship of their gods they do all the disgusting things that the LORD hates. They even sacrifice their children in the fires on their altars.

The LORD your God hates people who do these disgusting things, and that is why he is driving those nations out of the land as you advance.

It will be four generations before your descendants come back here, because I will not drive out the Amorites until they become so wicked that they must be punished."

Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these acts, for that is how the pagans made themselves unclean, those pagans who lived in the land before you and whom the LORD is driving out so that you can go in.

Their actions made the land unclean, and so the LORD is punishing the land and making it reject the people who lived there.