Deuteronomy 20:10-18

Evangelical Heritage Version

¹⁰ When you approach a city to fight against it, call out to it, asking for a peaceful surrender. ¹¹ If the city answers you, “Peace,” and it opens up its gates for you, then all the people found in it will become forced labor for you and they will serve you.

¹² But if it does not make peace with you, and it makes war against you, then lay siege against it. ¹³ The Lord your God will deliver it into your hands, and you will strike down all the males with the edge of the sword.

¹⁴ But the women and the children, and the cattle and everything that is in the city—all its plunder—take as spoils of war for yourself. You may make use of the plunder of your enemies that the Lord your God gives you.

¹⁵ Do this to all the cities that are very far away from you, which are not cities of the nations around here.

¹⁶ However, from the cities of these people that the Lord your God is giving to you as your inheritance, do not keep alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Devote them completely to destruction—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded you, ¹⁸ so that they do not teach you to commit all of the abominations that they commit for their gods, with the result that you sin against the Lord your God.