10647. 'Lest by chance you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land' means being linked thereby to any other sort of religion that has evil in it. This is clear from the meaning of 'a covenant' as a joining or linking together, dealt with in 665, 666, 1023, 1038, 1864, 1996, 2003, 2021, 6804, 8767, 8778, so that 'making a covenant' means being linked to; and from the meaning of 'the inhabitants of the land' as a religion involving evil, dealt with above in 10640. Whether you say a religion involving evil or the evil of a religion, it amounts to the same thing. The injunction that no covenant was to be made with the inhabitants of the land is repeated here on account of the train of thought in the internal sense.