10 “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, (A)offer terms of peace to it. 11 And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. 12 But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, (B)you shall put all its males to the sword, 14 (C)but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you (D)shall take as plunder for yourselves. And (E)you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. 16 But (F)in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but (G)you shall devote them to complete destruction,[a] the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, 18 that (H)they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you (I)sin against the Lord your God.

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Footnotes

  1. Deuteronomy 20:17 That is, set apart (devote) as an offering to the Lord (for destruction)

10 “When you approach a city to fight against it, make an offer of peace. 11 If it accepts your offer of peace and opens its gates to you, all the people found in it will become forced laborers for you and serve you.(A) 12 However, if it does not make peace with you but wages war against you, lay siege to it. 13 When the Lord your God hands it over to you, strike down all its males with the sword.(B) 14 But you may take the women, dependents, animals, and whatever else is in the city—all its spoil—as plunder. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies that the Lord your God has given you. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are far away from you and are not among the cities of these nations. 16 However, you must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. 17 You must completely destroy them—the Hethite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite—as the Lord your God has commanded you, 18 so that they won’t teach you to do all the detestable acts they do for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.(C)

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