Proclaim Peace to It
10 When you draw near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it. 11 It shall be, if it gives you answer of peace and opens to you, then it shall be that all the people who are found therein shall become forced laborers to you, and shall serve you. 12 If it will make no peace with you, but will make war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 When Yahweh your God delivers it into your hand, you shall strike every male of it with the edge of the sword; 14 but the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city, even all its plunder, you shall take for plunder for yourself. You may use the plunder of your enemies, which Yahweh your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far off from you, which are not of the cities of these nations. 16 But of the cities of these peoples that Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes; 17 but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, as Yahweh your God has commanded you; 18 that they not teach you to follow all their abominations, which they have done for their gods; so would you sin against Yahweh your God. 19 When you shall besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; for you may eat of them. You shall not cut them down, for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged by you? 20 Only the trees that you know are not trees for food, you shall destroy and cut them down. You shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.
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.
settled What this mark means