Set apart, but what does it mean?

Set-apartness is not meant to encourage a sense of superiority on the part of God’s people; it is God who is superior, not his servants. The members of the community are not to look down their collective noses at the Canaanites floundering in their idolatry. If we take the whole grand sweep of the Old Testament into consideration, the ultimate design is for Israel to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 243 (emphasis original)