'Nations' in the Bible

The coastland peoples spread out into their lands. These are Japheth’s sons by their clans, in their nations. Each group had its own language.

These are Ham’s sons, by their clans, according to their languages, in their own lands and their nations.

These are Shem’s sons by their clans, according to their languages, in their lands and their nations.

These are the clans of Noah’s sons, according to their family records, in their nations. The nations on earth spread out from these after the flood.

“As for Me, My covenant is with you: you will become the father of many nations.

Your name will no longer be Abram, but your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations.

I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you.

I will bless her; indeed, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will produce nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”

Abraham is to become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him.

And all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring because you have obeyed My command.”

And the Lord said to her:Two nations are in your womb;two people will come from you and be separated.One people will be stronger than the other,and the older will serve the younger.

I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky, I will give your offspring all these lands, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring,

May peoples serve youand nations bow down to you.Be master over your brothers;may your mother’s sons bow down to you.Those who curse you will be cursed,and those who bless you will be blessed.

God also said to him:I am God Almighty.Be fruitful and multiply.A nation, indeed an assembly of nations,will come from you,and kings will descend from you.

He said to me, ‘I will make you fruitful and numerous; I will make many nations come from you, and I will give this land as an eternal possession to your future descendants.’

“I will cause the people ahead of you to feel terror and throw into confusion all the nations you come to. I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you in retreat.

For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory. No one will covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the Lord your God.

“Do not defile yourselves by any of these practices, for the nations I am driving out before you have defiled themselves by all these things.

If you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it has vomited out the nations that were before you.

You must not follow the statutes of the nations I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and I abhorred them.

You are to be holy to Me because I, Yahweh, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be Mine.

Your male and female slaves are to be from the nations around you; you may purchase male and female slaves.

But I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw a sword to chase after you. So your land will become desolate, and your cities will become ruins.

You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you.

For their sake I will remember the covenant with their fathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God; I am Yahweh.”

If You kill this people with a single blow, the nations that have heard of Your fame will declare,

I see them from the top of rocky cliffs,and I watch them from the hills.There is a people living alone;it does not consider itself among the nations.

God brought him out of Egypt;He is like the horns of a wild ox for them.He will feed on enemy nationsand gnaw their bones;he will strike them with his arrows.

Then Balaam saw Amalek and proclaimed his poem:Amalek was first among the nations,but his future is destruction.

The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be reduced to a few survivors among the nations where the Lord your God will drive you.

to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you in and give you their land as an inheritance, as is now taking place.

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess, and He drives out many nations before you—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you—

“If you say to yourself, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I drive them out?’

The Lord your God will drive out these nations before you little by little. You will not be able to destroy them all at once; otherwise, the wild animals will become too numerous for you.

Like the nations the Lord is about to destroy before you, you will perish if you do not obey the Lord your God.

“Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan to go and drive out nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities fortified to the heavens.

When the Lord your God drives them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘The Lord brought me in to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’ Instead, the Lord will drive out these nations before you because of their wickedness.

You are not going to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or your integrity. Instead, the Lord your God will drive out these nations before you because of their wickedness, in order to keep the promise He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will drive out nations greater and stronger than you are.

Destroy completely all the places where the nations that you are driving out worship their gods—on the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree.

“When the Lord your God annihilates the nations before you, which you are entering to take possession of, and you drive them out and live in their land,

be careful not to be ensnared by their ways after they have been destroyed before you. Do not inquire about their gods, asking, ‘How did these nations worship their gods? I’ll also do the same.’

When the Lord your God blesses you as He has promised you, you will lend to many nations but not borrow; you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you.

“When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, take possession of it, live in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations around me,’

“When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not imitate the detestable customs of those nations.

Everyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and the Lord your God is driving out the nations before you because of these detestable things.

Though these nations you are about to drive out listen to fortune-tellers and diviners, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do this.

“When the Lord your God annihilates the nations whose land He is giving you, so that you drive them out and live in their cities and houses,

This is how you are to treat all the cities that are far away from you and are not among the cities of these nations.

that He will elevate you to praise, fame, and glory above all the nations He has made, and that you will be a holy people to the Lord your God as He promised.”

“Now if you faithfully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all His commands I am giving you today, the Lord your God will put you far above all the nations of the earth.

The Lord will open for you His abundant storehouse, the sky, to give your land rain in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow.

You will find no peace among those nations, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despondent spirit.

“Indeed, you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and passed through the nations where you traveled.

Be sure there is no man, woman, clan, or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Be sure there is no root among you bearing poisonous and bitter fruit.

All the nations will ask, ‘Why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’

“When all these things happen to you—the blessings and curses I have set before you—and you come to your senses while you are in all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you,

The Lord your God is the One who will cross ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you will drive them out. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, as the Lord has said.

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritanceand divided the human race,He set the boundaries of the peoplesaccording to the number of the people of Israel.

Rejoice, you nations, concerning His people,for He will avenge the blood of His servants.He will take vengeance on His adversaries;He will purify His land and His people.

and you have seen for yourselves everything the Lord your God did to all these nations on your account, because it was the Lord your God who was fighting for you.

See, I have allotted these remaining nations to you as an inheritance for your tribes, including all the nations I have destroyed, from the Jordan westward to the Mediterranean Sea.

and so that you do not associate with these nations remaining among you. Do not call on the names of their gods or make an oath to them; do not worship them or bow down to them.

“The Lord has driven out great and powerful nations before you, and no one is able to stand against you to this day.

For if you turn away and cling to the rest of these nations remaining among you, and if you intermarry or associate with them and they with you,

know for certain that the Lord your God will not continue to drive these nations out before you. They will become a snare and a trap for you, a scourge for your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you disappear from this good land the Lord your God has given you.

I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died.

The Lord left these nations and did not drive them out immediately. He did not hand them over to Joshua.

These are the nations the Lord left in order to test Israel, since the Israelites had fought none of these in any of the wars with Canaan.

These nations included: the five rulers of the Philistines and all of the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived in the Lebanese mountains from Mount Baal-hermon as far as the entrance to Hamath.

So the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his forces was Sisera who lived in Harosheth of the Nations.

Sisera summoned all his 900 iron chariots and all the people who were with him from Harosheth of the Nations to the Wadi Kishon.

Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth of the Nations, and the whole army of Sisera fell by the sword; not a single man was left.

They said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons do not follow your example. Therefore, appoint a king to judge us the same as all the other nations have.”

Then we’ll be like all the other nations: our king will judge us, go out before us, and fight our battles.”

And who is like Your people Israel? God came to one nation on earth in order to redeem a people for Himself, to make a name for Himself, and to perform for them great and awesome acts, driving out nations and their gods before Your people You redeemed for Yourself from Egypt.

King David also dedicated these to the Lord, along with the silver and gold he had dedicated from all the nations he had subdued—

You have freed me from the feuds among my people;You have appointed me the head of nations;a people I had not known serve me.

Therefore I will praise You, Lord, among the nations;I will sing about Your name.

He was wiser than anyone—wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, sons of Mahol. His reputation extended to all the surrounding nations.

from the nations that the Lord had told the Israelites about, “Do not intermarry with them, and they must not intermarry with you, because they will turn you away from Me to their gods.” Solomon was deeply attached to these women and loved them.

there were even male cult prostitutes in the land. They imitated all the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites.

but walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even made his son pass through the fire, imitating the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites.

They had lived according to the customs of the nations that the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites and the customs the kings of Israel had introduced.

They burned incense on all the high places just like those nations that the Lord had driven out before them. They did evil things, provoking the Lord.

They rejected His statutes and His covenant He had made with their ancestors and the decrees He had given them. They pursued worthless idols and became worthless themselves, following the surrounding nations the Lord had commanded them not to imitate.

The settlers spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, “The nations that you have deported and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the requirements of the God of the land. Therefore He has sent lions among them that are killing them because the people don’t know the requirements of the God of the land.”

They feared the Lord, but they also worshiped their own gods according to the custom of the nations where they had been deported from.

These nations feared the Lord but also served their idols. Their children and grandchildren continue doing as their fathers did until today.

Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land from the power of the king of Assyria?

Did the gods of the nations that my predecessors destroyed rescue them—nations such as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the Edenites in Telassar?

Lord, it is true that the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands.

He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, imitating the detestable practices of the nations that the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites.

But they did not listen; Manasseh caused them to stray so that they did greater evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.

But they were unfaithful to the God of their ancestors. They prostituted themselves with the gods of the nations God had destroyed before them.

Then David’s fame spread throughout the lands, and the Lord caused all the nations to be terrified of him.

Declare His glory among the nations,His wonderful works among all peoples.

Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice,and let them say among the nations, “The Lord is King!”

And say: “Save us, God of our salvation;gather us and rescue us from the nationsso that we may give thanks to Your holy nameand rejoice in Your praise.

And who is like Your people Israel? God, You came to one nation on earth to redeem a people for Yourself, to make a name for Yourself through great and awesome works by driving out nations before Your people You redeemed from Egypt.