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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Deuteronomy 20:10 - 20:20
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Manner of Dealing With a Besieged City
v. 10. When thou, in the course of a campaign during a war, comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it, by inviting the people of the city to submit peacefully, to surrender without resistance.
v. 11. And it shall be, if it, the city, make thee answer of peace, agree to the conditions as offered, and open (its gates) unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found there in shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee, being held in vassalage and obliged to pay tribute, also in personal service, as a return for the sparing of their lives. The purpose of this ordinance was, of course, to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.
v. 12. And if it, the city in question, will make no peace with thee, refusing to consider the conditions as proposed, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it;
v. 13. and when the Lord, thy God, hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword, Num_31:7;
v. 14. but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself, as well-earned booty; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, use it for the maintenance of life, which the Lord, thy God, hath given thee.
v. 15. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations, of the people living in Canaan proper.
v. 16. But of the cities of these people which the Lord, thy God, doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, neither man nor beast, for it was to be a war of extermination.
v. 17. But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord, thy God, hath commanded thee;
v. 18. that they teach you not to do after all their abominations which they have done unto their gods, the idolatrous and immoral customs connected with their worship; so should ye sin against the Lord, your God, as later history abundantly shows.
v. 19. When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof, the various trees bearing fruits and nuts, by forcing an ax against them, by chopping them down with the customary swinging motion; for thou mayest eat of them, their fruit is able to sustain life, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life), he depends upon it for food, to employ them in the siege, in the building of breastworks and trenches. The children of Israel were to remember that war should be waged with men only, not with trees whose fruit served for food. They were not to practice vandalism and ruthlessness.
v. 20. Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, whose fruit could not be used for food, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee until it be subdued, literally, until it (the walls) falls down from its fortified height and is thus overthrown. With the Lord on their side, the children of Israel were always sure of victory.