What was the relationship of the gentiles to God in the Old Testament?

A:There seems to have been an adversarial relationship between the gentiles and God in much of the Old Testament. Genesis says that Isaac and Jacob were not permitted to marry among the local Canaanites. God promised the land of the Canaanites to the Israelites, regardless of the well-established rights of the Canaanites over their ancestral lands. Then, when Joshua led the Israelites in fulfilment of that promise, God ordered that every living person in the conquered cities must be slaughtered. Throughout the Deuteronomic History, from Joshua to 2 Kings, God sides with the Hebrew people against their neighbours, no matter how much they sinned against him.

Only in the Book of Isaiah and in the post-Exilic period do we see the stance of the Old Testament authors soften against the gentiles. Isaiah 45:1 goes as far as to say that God called Cyrus, king of Persia, his anointed. Cyrus had freed the Jews from their captivity.

As far as the Old Testament authors were concerned, God cared only for the Hebrew people and was prepared to have the gentiles persecuted or slaughtered if they got in the way of his Chosen People.