Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
Proclaim Peace to It
Deuteronomy 20:10-20
10 When you draw near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it. · WEB
Every siege must open with an offer of terms, and the law protects the fruit trees around a city under attack.
The rule for warfare outside the land is stated first and it is a requirement, not a courtesy. When you draw near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it Deuteronomy 20:10.
No campaign may begin with an assault. Terms must be offered, and if accepted the population is put to forced labor rather than destroyed Deuteronomy 20:11. Only a city that will make no peace with you, but will make war against you is besieged Deuteronomy 20:12, and even then the women, children and livestock are spared Deuteronomy 20:14.
That is the general law of war, and the chapter says so: thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far off from you Deuteronomy 20:15.
Then the exception, and it is the hardest passage in the book. Of the cities of the nations being dispossessed, you shall save alive nothing that breathes Deuteronomy 20:16.
Nothing is gained by softening it, and the text does not. What the text does supply is the reason, and it is the only one given: that they not teach you to follow all their abominations, which they have done for their gods Deuteronomy 20:18.
The stated concern is religious contamination, and the previous chapter has described what those practices included — children passed through fire Deuteronomy 18:10 Deuteronomy 12:31. Elsewhere the same book calls the dispossession a judgment on the wickedness of these nations and denies three times that Israel deserved the land Deuteronomy 9:4–6, and the wider record shows the sentence applied to Israel itself on the same terms Deuteronomy 4:26. It is also bounded: seven named nations, in one territory, at one time. It is not a policy for war in general, and this very chapter gives the policy for war in general two paragraphs earlier.
The last provision is unexpected and it is about trees.
During a long siege, fruit trees may not be cut for siegeworks: you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; for you may eat of them Deuteronomy 20:19. Only non-fruit trees may be taken Deuteronomy 20:20.
And the reason offered is a question: is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged by you? The tree is not the enemy. An army starving a city out is forbidden to strip the countryside that will have to feed people afterward, whoever wins — and the orchard, which takes a generation to grow, outlasts the war.
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