Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. The treaty prohibition returns from Exodus 23:32 with the same warning. The golden calf — Israel's rapid adoption of Egyptian religious forms during Moses' absence — is the lived demonstration of why the prohibition is necessary. A people prone to idolatry cannot safely make alliances with nations whose idols they are prone to worship. The warning is not ethnic but theological: the covenant community must protect the exclusive loyalty that its existence depends on.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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