Deuteronomy 20:10-21:9

New King James Version

¹⁰ “When you go near a city to fight against it, ^(A)then proclaim an offer of peace to it. ¹¹ And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace, and open to you, then all the people who are found in it shall be placed under tribute to you, and serve you. ¹² Now if the city will not make peace with you, but war against you, then you shall besiege it. ¹³ And when the Lord your God delivers it into your hands, ^(B)you shall strike every male in it with the edge of the sword. ¹⁴ But the women, the little ones, ^(C)the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself; and ^(D)you shall eat the enemies’ plunder which the Lord your God gives you. ¹⁵ Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.

¹⁶ “But ^(E)of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, ¹⁷ but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, ¹⁸ lest ^(F)they teach you to do according to all their ^[a]abominations which they have done for their gods, and you ^(G)sin against the Lord your God.

¹⁹ “When you besiege a city for a long time, while making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; if you can eat of them, do not cut them down to use in the siege, for the tree of the field is man’s food. ²⁰ Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, to build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it is subdued.

The Law Concerning Unsolved Murder

21 “If anyone is found slain, lying in the field in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, ² then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to the surrounding cities. ³ And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which has not pulled with a ^(H)yoke. ⁴ The elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with flowing water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and they shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. ⁵ Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for ^(I)the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to Him and to bless in the name of the Lord; ^(J)by their word every controversy and every ^[b]assault shall be settled. ⁶ And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man ^(K)shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. ⁷ Then they shall answer and say, ‘Our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it. ⁸ Provide atonement, O Lord, for Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, ^(L)and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of Your people Israel.’ And atonement shall be provided on their behalf for the blood. ⁹ So ^(M)you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord.