Deuteronomy 20:10-20
Easy-to-Read Version
10 “When you go to attack a city, you must first offer peace to the people there. 11 If they accept your offer and open their gates, all the people in that city will become your slaves and be forced to work for you. 12 But if the city refuses to make peace with you and fights against you, you should surround the city. 13 And when the Lord your God lets you take the city, you must kill all the men in it. 14 But you may take for yourselves the women, the children, the cattle, and everything else in the city. You may use all these things. The Lord your God has given these things to you. 15 That is what you must do to all the cities that are very far from you—the cities that are not in the land where you will live.
16 “But when you take cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you must kill everyone. 17 You must completely destroy all the people—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. The Lord your God has commanded you to do this. 18 So then they will not be able to teach you to sin against the Lord your God or to do any of the terrible things they do when they worship their gods.
19 “When you are making war against a city, you might surround that city for a long time. You must not cut down the fruit trees around that city. You may eat the fruit from these trees, but you must not cut them down. These trees are not the enemy, so don’t make war against them. 20 But you may cut down the trees that you know are not fruit trees. You may use these trees to build weapons for making war against that city. You may use them until the city falls.
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Devarim 20:10-20
Orthodox Jewish Bible
10 When thou comest nigh unto a town to fight against it, then proclaim an offer of shalom unto it.
11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of shalom, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that kol haAm that is found therein shall be servants, placed under tribute unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
12 And if it will make no shalom with thee, but engages in milchamah against thee, then thou shalt besiege it;
13 And when Hashem Eloheicha hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt strike every male thereof with the edge of the cherev;
14 But the nashim, and the little ones, and the behemah, and all that is in the town, even all the plunder thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the plunder of thine enemies Hashem Eloheicha hath given thee.
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the towns which are very far off from thee, which are not of the towns of these Goyim.
16 But of the towns of these people, which Hashem Eloheicha doth give thee for a nachalah, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth;
17 But thou shalt utterly put them under cherem of destruction; namely, the Chitti, and the Emori, the Kena’ni, and the Perizzi, the Chivi, and the Yevusi; as Hashem Eloheicha hath commanded thee;
18 That they teach you not to do after all their to’evot (abominations) which they have done unto their elohim; so that ye would sin against Hashem Eloheichem.
19 When thou shalt besiege a town yamim rabbim, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; although thou mayest eat of them, thou shalt not cut them down. Are the etz hasadeh men that they should come under your siege?
20 Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for food, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build siege works against the town that maketh milchamah with thee, until it be subdued.
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