Deuteronomy 20:17-19

New Catholic Bible

¹⁷ Wipe them out, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, just as the Lord, your God, has commanded you. ¹⁸ Otherwise they will teach you to perform the abominations that they practice when they worship their gods, and you would be sinning against the Lord, your God.

¹⁹ Preserving Trees. When you besiege a city and it lasts a long time, and you do battle with it and capture it, do not cut down its trees with an ax, for you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down! Are trees in the field like people that you would lay siege to them?