'Nations' in the Bible

From these the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, every one according to his language, according to their families, into their nations.

These are the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, by their nations.

These are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, according to their nations.

These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations; and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood.

“As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you,And you will be the father of a multitude of nations.

“No longer shall your name be called Abram,But your name shall be Abraham;For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you.

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

since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed?

In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

The Lord said to her,“Two nations are in your womb;And two peoples will be separated from your body;And one people shall be stronger than the other;And the older shall serve the younger.”

I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed;

May peoples serve you,And nations bow down to you;Be master of your brothers,And may your mother’s sons bow down to you.Cursed be those who curse you,And blessed be those who bless you.”

God also said to him,“I am God Almighty;Be fruitful and multiply;A nation and a company of nations shall come from you,And kings shall come forth from you.

But his father refused and said, “I know, my son, I know; he also will become a people and he also will be great. However, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.”

Then God said, “Behold, I am going to make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform miracles which have not been produced in all the earth nor among any of the nations; and all the people among whom you live will see the working of the Lord, for it is a fearful thing that I am going to perform with you.

For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders, and no man shall 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 things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled.

As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you.

You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste.

But you will perish among the nations, and your enemies’ land will consume you.

But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the Lord.’”

Now if You slay this people as one man, then the nations who have heard of Your fame will say,

“As I see him from the top of the rocks,And I look at him from the hills;Behold, a people who dwells apart,And will not be reckoned among the nations.

“God brings him out of Egypt,He is for him like the horns of the wild ox.He will devour the nations who are his adversaries,And will crush their bones in pieces,And shatter them with his arrows.

And he looked at Amalek and took up his discourse and said,“Amalek was the first of the nations,But his end shall be destruction.”

The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord drives you.

driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in and to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today.

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you,

“If you should say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’

The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for the wild beasts would grow too numerous for you.

Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish; because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

“Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven,

“Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.

It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you.

You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.

“When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land,

beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?’

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

“When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’

“When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations.

For those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do so.

“When the Lord your God cuts off the nations, whose land the Lord your God gives you, and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and in their houses,

Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby.

and that He will set you high above all nations which He has made, for praise, fame, and honor; and that you shall be a consecrated people to the Lord your God, as He has spoken.”

“Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

The Lord will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand; and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.

Among those nations you shall find no rest, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot; but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul.

(for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed;

so that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.

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

“So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you,

It is the Lord your God who will cross ahead of you; He will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the Lord has spoken.

“When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,When He separated the sons of man,He set the boundaries of the peoplesAccording to the number of the sons of Israel.

“Rejoice, O nations, with His people;For He will avenge the blood of His servants,And will render vengeance on His adversaries,And will atone for His land and His people.”

And you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations because of you, for the Lord your God is He who has been fighting for you.

See, I have apportioned to you these nations which remain as an inheritance for your tribes, with all the nations which I have cut off, from the Jordan even to the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun.

so that you will not associate with these nations, these which remain among you, or mention the name of their gods, or make anyone swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to them.

For the Lord has driven out great and strong nations from before you; and as for you, no man has stood before you to this day.

For if you ever go back and cling to the rest of these nations, these which remain among you, and intermarry with them, so that you associate with them and they with you,

know with certainty that the Lord your God will not continue to drive these nations out from before you; but they will be a snare and a trap to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land which the Lord your God has given you.

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

So the Lord allowed those nations to remain, not driving them out quickly; and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua.

Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to test Israel by them (that is, all who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan;

These nations are: the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath.

and they said to him, “Behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations.”

that we also may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

And what one nation on the earth is like Your people Israel, whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people and to make a name for Himself, and to do a great thing for You and awesome things for Your land, before Your people whom You have redeemed for Yourself from Egypt, from nations and their gods?

King David also dedicated these to the Lord, with the silver and gold that he had dedicated from all the nations which he had subdued:

“You have also delivered me from the contentions of my people;You have kept me as head of the nations;A people whom I have not known serve me.

“Therefore I will give thanks to You, O Lord, among the nations,And I will sing praises to Your name.

For he was wiser than all men, than Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was known in all the surrounding nations.

from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, “You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you, for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.” Solomon held fast to these in love.

There were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel.

But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had driven out from before the sons of Israel.

and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel, and in the customs of the kings of Israel which they had introduced.

and there they burned incense on all the high places as the nations did which the Lord had carried away to exile before them; and they did evil things provoking the Lord.

They rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers and His warnings with which He warned them. And they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the nations which surrounded them, concerning which the Lord had commanded them not to do like them.

So they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, “The nations whom you have carried away into exile in the cities of Samaria do not know the custom of the god of the land; so he has sent lions among them, and behold, they kill them because they do not know the custom of the god of the land.”

They feared the Lord and served their own gods according to the custom of the nations from among whom they had been carried away into exile.

So while these nations feared the Lord, they also served their idols; their children likewise and their grandchildren, as their fathers did, so they do to this day.

Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

Did the gods of those nations which my fathers destroyed deliver them, even Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?

Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands

He did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel.

But they did not listen, and Manasseh seduced them to do evil more than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the sons of Israel.

Then the fame of David went out into all the lands; and the Lord brought the fear of him on all the nations.

Tell of His glory among the nations,His wonderful deeds among all the peoples.

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;And let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”

Then say, “Save us, O God of our salvation,And gather us and deliver us from the nations,To give thanks to Your holy name,And glory in Your praise.”

And what one nation in the earth is like Your people Israel, whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people, to make You a name by great and terrible things, in driving out nations from before Your people, whom You redeemed out of Egypt?

King David also dedicated these to the Lord with the silver and the gold which he had carried away from all the nations: from Edom, Moab, the sons of Ammon, the Philistines, and from Amalek.

and he said, “O Lord, the God of our fathers, are You not God in the heavens? And are You not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in Your hand so that no one can stand against You.

Moreover, he burned incense in the valley of Ben-hinnom and burned his sons in fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel.

Do you not know what I and my fathers have done to all the peoples of the lands? Were the gods of the nations of the lands able at all to deliver their land from my hand?

Who was there among all the gods of those nations which my fathers utterly destroyed who could deliver his people out of my hand, that your God should be able to deliver you from my hand?

He also wrote letters to insult the Lord God of Israel, and to speak against Him, saying, “As the gods of the nations of the lands have not delivered their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand.”

And many were bringing gifts to the Lord at Jerusalem and choice presents to Hezekiah king of Judah, so that he was exalted in the sight of all nations thereafter.

He did evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel.