Concerning war
20
📚When you go out to battle against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and a people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt is with you. 2 📚And this is the way it should be when you have come near the battle: the priest must approach and speak to the people, 3 📚and say to them, “Hear, O Israel, today you draw near to battle against your enemies. Do not let your hearts faint. Do not be afraid, and do not tremble, or be terrified because of them. 4 📚For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you”. 5 📚And the officers shall speak to the people, saying, “Who is the man that has built a new house, and not yet dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, or he may die in the battle, and another man will dedicate it. 6 📚And who is the man that has planted a vineyard, and has not yet eaten grapes from it? Let him also go and return to his house, or he may die in the battle, and another man will eat from it. 7 📚And who is the man that has become engaged to a woman, and has not married her? Let him go and return to his house, or he may die in the battle, and another man will marry her”. 8 📚And the officers shall speak further to the people and say, “Who is the man that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, or the heart of his brethren may faint just as his heart”. 9 And it shall be, when the officers finish speaking to the people, that they appoint captains in the armies to lead the people.
10 📚When you come near a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it. 11 📚And if it gives you an answer of peace and opens the gates to you, then it shall be like this: all the people who are found in it shall become forced labour for you, and shall serve you. 12 And if it will not make peace with you, but wars against you, then you shall besiege it; 13 📚and when the LORD your God has given it into your hands, you must strike every male in it with the edge of the sword; 14 📚but the women, and the little ones, and the livestock, and everything that is in the city, all its plunder, you shall take for yourself; and you shall eat the plunder of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. 15 This is how you shall do to all the cities which are at a long distance from you, which are not among the cities of these nations.
16 📚But concerning the cities of these people, which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you must not save anything alive that breathes, 17 📚but you must completely destroy them, just as the LORD your God has commanded you; that is, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; 18 📚so that they do not teach you to behave according to all their abominations, which they have done for their gods, and so cause you to sin against the LORD your God.
20:16-18 Note at Lev 18:24. As long as such people lived they would be a danger to morality and true worship in Israel.⚜
19 📚When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it to capture it, you must not destroy its trees by taking an axe to them; for you can eat fruit from them; and you must not cut them down to use in the siege; for the trees of the field are for man’s benefit. 20 📚But as for the trees which you know are not trees for food, you may destroy and cut them down; and you may build siege-works against the city that is fighting against you, until it is subdued.
20:19-20 They were to protect the environment and not unnecessarily destroy it.⚜