'Nations' in the Bible

By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.

These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.

These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.

These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations;

With Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five.

As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.

Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.

And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.

And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her.

Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?

And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles; twelve princes according to their nations.

And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;

Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;

In addition, all of the surrounding nations came to Joseph to buy grain from Egypt, because the famine had become severe throughout the world.

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.’

And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.

The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor a ruler's staff from between his feet, until the one comes, who owns them both, and to him will belong the allegiance of nations.

The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will seize the inhabitants of Philistia.

And now if you carefully obey me and keep my covenant, you are to be my special possession out of all the nations, because the whole earth belongs to me,

“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.

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 cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.

Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:

That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued 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.

So I said to you, "You yourselves shall take possession of their land, and I myself shall give it to you to possess it--a land flowing with milk and honey"; I [am] Yahweh your God, who {has set you apart} from the nations.

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.

And in addition, you may get, for money, servants from among the children of other nations who are living with you, and from their families which have come to birth in your land; and these will be your property.

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.”

Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,

For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.

Peoples will be in fear before his strength, his arm will be on great nations: his king will be higher than Agag, and his kingdom made great in honour.

God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.

And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and said, Amalek was the first of the nations; but his latter end shall be that he perish for ever.

This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee.

Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.

And the LORD shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the LORD shall lead you.

To drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as it is this day.

Do not follow other gods, from the gods of the nations around you.

When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

because you are a holy people to the LORD your God. The LORD your God chose you to be his people, his treasured possession from all the nations on the face of the earth."

"It wasn't because you were more numerous than other people of the earth that the LORD committed himself to you and chose you. In fact, you were the least numerous of all the nations.

You'll be blessed among all the nations. There'll be no infertility among you, not even among your herds.

If thou shalt say in thine heart, These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them?

And the LORD thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.

As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God.

Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven,

Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.

Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

yet the LORD committed himself to love your ancestors and did so! He chose you their descendants after them from all the nations, as it is today.

Then will the LORD drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves.

Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree:

When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land;

Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.

For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.

For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.

When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me;

When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations 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.

For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.

When the LORD thy God hath cut off the nations, whose land the LORD thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their cities, and in their houses;

When you go out to war against other nations, and come face to face with horses and war-carriages and armies greater in number than yourselves, have no fear of them: for the Lord your God is with you, who took you up out of the land of Egypt.

Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

"You are not to leave even one person alive in the cities of these nations that the LORD your God is about to give you as an inheritance.

When you go out to war against other nations, and the Lord your God gives them up into your hands and you take them as prisoners;

From men of other nations you may take interest, but not from an Israelite: so that the blessing of the Lord your God may be on everything to which you put your hand, in the land which you are about to take as your heritage.

And to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the LORD thy God, as he hath spoken.

And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:

The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.

And Yahweh shall make you as head and not the tail, and you shall be only at the top [of the nations], and you shall not be at the bottom, if you listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God that I [am] commanding you {today} {and diligently observe them}.

And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee.

They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever.

"He'll scatter you among the nations from one end of the earth to the other, and there you'll serve other gods made of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known.

And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind:

(For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which ye passed by;

Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;

Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath driven thee,

That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee.

The LORD thy God, he will go over before thee, and he will destroy these nations from before thee, and thou shalt possess them: and Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as the LORD hath said.

When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.

They will call the nations to the mountain, and there they will offer righteous sacrifices, for they'll draw from the abundance of the sea and from the hidden treasures of the sand."

He has done this so all the nations of the earth might recognize the Lord's power and so you might always obey the Lord your God."

The king of Dor in the coast of Dor, one; the king of the nations of Gilgal, one;

And ye have seen all that the LORD your God hath done unto all these nations because of you; for the LORD your God is he that hath fought for you.

Behold, I have divided unto you by lot these nations that remain, to be an inheritance for your tribes, from Jordan, with all the nations that I have cut off, even unto the great sea westward.

That ye come not among these nations, these that remain among you; neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them:

For the LORD hath driven out from before you great nations and strong: but as for you, no man hath been able to stand before you unto this day.

Else if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to you:

Know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the LORD your God hath given you.

since the LORD our God is the one who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, from a life of slavery. He did those great things right in front of us, preserving us along the way that we traveled and among all the nations through whose territory we passed.