'Nations' in the Bible

From these came the nations of the sea-lands, with their different families and languages.

All these, with their different families, languages, lands, and nations, are the offspring of Ham.

These, with their families and their languages and their lands and their nations, are the offspring of Shem.

These are the families of the sons of Noah, in the order of their generations and their nations: from these came all the nations of the earth after the great flow of waters.

As for me, my agreement is made with you, and you will be the father of nations without end.

No longer will your name be Abram, but Abraham, for I have made you the father of a number of nations.

I will make you very fertile, so that nations will come from you and kings will be your offspring.

And I will give her a blessing so that you will have a son by her: truly my blessing will be on her, and she will be the mother of nations: kings of peoples will be her offspring.

Seeing that Abraham will certainly become a great and strong nation, and his name will be used by all the nations of the earth as a blessing?

And your seed will be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, because you have done what I gave you orders to do.

And the Lord said to her, Two nations are in your body, and two peoples will come to birth from you: the one will be stronger than the other, and the older will be the servant of the younger.

I will make your seed like the stars of heaven in number, and will give them all these lands, and your seed will be a blessing to all the nations of the earth;

Let peoples be your servants, and nations go down before you: be lord over your brothers, and let your mother's sons go down before you: a curse be on everyone by whom you are cursed, and a blessing on those who give you a blessing.

And God said to him, I am God, the Ruler of all: be fertile, and have increase; a nation, truly a group of nations, will come from you, and kings will be your offspring;

And said to me, Truly, I will make you fertile and give you increase and will make of you a great family of nations: and I will give this land to your seed after you to be their heritage for ever.

But his father would not, saying, I am doing it on purpose, my son; he will certainly become a nation and a great one; but his younger brother will be greater than he, and his seed will become a great family of nations.

For I will send out the nations before you and make wide the limits of your land; and no man will make an attempt to take your land while you go up to give worship to the Lord, three times in the year.

Do not make yourself unclean in any of these ways; for so have those nations whom I am driving out from before you made themselves unclean:

So that the land may not put you out from it, when you make it unclean, as it put out the nations which were there before you.

And do not keep the rules of the nations which I am driving out before you; for they did all these things, and for that reason my soul was turned against them.

And you are to be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy and have made you separate from the nations, so that you may be my people.

But you may get servants as property from among the nations round about; from them you may take men-servants and women-servants.

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.

And I will send you out in all directions among the nations, and my sword will be uncovered against you, and your land will be without any living thing, and your towns will be made waste.

And death will overtake you among strange nations, and the land of your haters will be your destruction.

And because of them I will keep in mind the agreement which I made with their fathers, whom I took out of the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, to be their God: I am the Lord.

Now if you put to death all this people as one man, then the nations who have had word of your glory will say,

From the top of the rocks I see him, looking down on him from the hills: it is a people made separate, not to be numbered 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.

It is God who has taken him out of Egypt; his horns are like those of the mountain ox; the nations warring against him will be his food, their bones will be broken, they will be wounded with his arrows.

Then, turning his eyes to Amalek, he went on with his story and said, Amalek was the first of the nations, but his part will be destruction for ever.

And the Lord will send you wandering among the peoples; only a small band of you will be kept from death among the nations where the Lord will send you.

Driving out before you nations greater and stronger than you, to take you into their land and give it to you for your heritage, as at this day.

When the Lord your God takes you into the land where you are going, which is to be your heritage, and has sent out the 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;

For you are a holy people to the Lord your God: marked out by the Lord your God to be his special people out of all the nations on the face of the earth.

The Lord did not give you his love or take you for himself because you were more in number than any other people; for you were the smallest of the nations:

If you say in your hearts, These nations are greater in number than we are: how are we to take their land from them?

The Lord your God will send out the nations before you little by little; they are not to be rooted out quickly, for fear that the beasts of the field may be increased overmuch against you.

Like the nations which the Lord is cutting off before you, so you will be cut off; because you would not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God.

Give ear, O Israel: today you are to go over Jordan, to take the heritage of nations greater and stronger than yourselves, and towns of great size with walls as high as heaven;

And after the Lord has sent them in flight from before you, say not in your heart, Because of my righteousness the Lord has given me this land; when it is because of their evil-doing that the Lord is driving these nations out before you.

Not for your righteousness or because your hearts are upright are you going in to take their land; but because of the evil-doing of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and to give effect to his oath to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Then the Lord will send these nations in flight before you, and you will take the lands of nations greater and stronger than yourselves.

You are to give up to the curse all those places where the nations, whom you are driving out, gave worship to their gods, on the high mountains and the hills and under every green tree:

After their destruction take care that you do not go in their ways, and that you do not give thought to their gods, saying, How did these nations give worship to their gods? I will do as they did.

For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has taken you to be his special people out of all the nations on the face of the earth.

For the Lord your God will give you his blessing as he has said: you will let other nations have the use of your money, but you will not make use of theirs; you will be rulers over a number of nations, but they will not be your rulers.

When you have come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken it for a heritage and are living in it, if it is your desire to have a king over you, like the other nations round about you;

When you have come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, do not take as your example the disgusting ways of those nations.

For these nations, whose land you are taking, give attention to readers of signs and to those using secret arts: but the Lord your God will not let you do so.

When the nations, whose land the Lord your God is giving you, have been cut off by him, and you have taken their place and are living in their towns 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.

So you are to do to all the towns far away, which are not the towns of these nations.

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 that he will make you high over all the nations he has made, in praise, in name, and in honour, and that you are to be a holy people to the Lord your God as he has said.

Now if you give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, and keep with care all these orders which I have given you today, then the Lord your God will put you high over all the nations of the earth:

Opening his store-house in heaven, the Lord will send rain on your land at the right time, blessing all the work of your hands: other nations will make use of your wealth, and you will have no need of theirs.

And you will become a wonder and a name of shame among all the nations where the Lord will take you.

And even among these nations there will be no peace for you, and no rest for your feet: but the Lord will give you there a shaking heart and wasting eyes and weariness of soul:

(For you have in mind how we were living in the land of Egypt; and how we came through all the nations which were on your way;

Truly all the nations will say, Why has the Lord done so to this land? what is the reason for this great and burning wrath?

Now when all these things have come on you, the blessing and the curse which I have put before you, if the thought of them comes back to your minds, when you are living among the nations where the Lord your God has sent you,

Then the Lord will have pity on you, changing your fate, and taking you back again from among all the nations where you have been forced to go.

The Lord your God, he will go over before you; he will send destruction on all those nations, and you will take their land as your heritage: and Joshua will go over at your head as the Lord has said.

When the Most High gave the nations their heritage, separating into groups the children of men, he had the limits of the peoples marked out, keeping in mind the number of the children of Israel.

Be glad, O you his people, over the nations; for he will take payment for the blood of his servants, and will give punishment to his haters, and take away the sin of his land, for his people.

You have seen everything the Lord your God has done to all these nations because of you; for it is the Lord your God who has been fighting for you.

Now I have given to you, as the heritage of your tribes, all these nations which are still in the land, together with those cut off by me, from Jordan as far as the Great Sea on the west

Have nothing to do with these nations who still are living among you; let not their gods be named by you or used in your oaths; do not be their servants or give them worship:

For the Lord has sent out from before you nations great and strong: and they have all given way before you till this day.

For if you go back, joining yourselves to the rest of these nations who are still among you, getting married to them and living with them and they with you:

Then you may be certain that the Lord your God will not go on driving these nations out from before you; but they will become a danger and a cause of sin to you, a whip for your sides and thorns in your eyes, till you are cut off from this good land which the Lord your God has given you.

From now on I will not go on driving out from before them any of the nations which at the death of Joshua were still living in this land;

So the Lord let those nations go on living in the land, not driving them out quickly, and did not give them up into the hands of Joshua.

Now these are the nations which the Lord kept in the land for the purpose of testing Israel by them, all those who had had no experience of all the wars of Canaan;

And they took as wives the daughters of these nations and gave their daughters to their sons, and became servants to their gods.

And said to him, See now, you are old, and your sons do not go in your ways: give us a king now to be our judge, so that we may be like the other nations.

So that we may be like the other nations, and so that our king may be our judge and go out before us to war.

These King David made holy to the Lord, together with the silver and gold which he had taken from the nations he had overcome--

The nations of Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon and the Philistines and the Amalekites and the goods he had taken from Hadadezer, the son of Rehob, king of Zobah.

You have made me free from the fightings of my people; you have made me the head of the nations: a people of whom I had no knowledge will be my servants.

Because of this I will give you praise, O Lord, among the nations, and will make a song of praise to your name.

For he was wiser than all men, even than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman and Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and he had a great name among all the nations round about.

The nations of which the Lord had said to the children of Israel, You are not to take wives from them and they are not to take wives from you; or they will certainly make you go after their gods: to these Solomon was united in love.

And more than this, there were those in the land who were used for sex purposes in the worship of the gods, doing the same disgusting crimes as the nations which the Lord had sent out before the children of Israel.

But he went in the ways of the kings of Israel, and even made his son go through the fire, copying the disgusting ways of the nations whom the Lord had sent out of the land before the children of Israel.

Living by the rules of the nations whom the Lord had sent out from before the children of Israel.

Burning their offerings in all the high places, as those nations did whom the Lord sent away from before them; they did evil things, moving the Lord to wrath;

And they went against his rules, and the agreement which he made with their fathers, and his laws which he gave them; they gave themselves up to things without sense or value, and became foolish like the nations round them, of whom the Lord had said, Do not as they do.

So they said to the king of Assyria, The nations whom you have taken as prisoners and put in the towns of Samaria, have no knowledge of the way of the god of the land: so he has sent lions among them, causing their death, because they have no knowledge of his way.

They gave worship to the Lord, but they gave honour to their gods like the nations did from whom they had been taken as prisoners.

So these nations, worshipping the Lord, still were servants to the images they had made; their children and their children's children did the same; as their fathers did, so do they, to this day.

Has any one of the gods of the nations kept his land from falling into the hands of the king of Assyria?

Did the gods of the nations keep safe those on whom my fathers sent destruction, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden who were in Telassar?

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

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, copying the disgusting ways of those nations whom the Lord had sent out before the children of Israel.

But they did not give ear; and Manasseh made them do more evil than those nations did, whom the Lord gave up to destruction before the children of Israel.

And David's name was honoured in all lands; and the Lord put the fear of him on all nations.

Make clear his glory to the nations, and his wonders to all the peoples.