10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace.(A) 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject(B) to forced labor(C) and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it.(D) 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock(E) and everything else in the city,(F) you may take these as plunder(G) for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance(H) from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.(I) 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods,(J) and you will sin(K) against the Lord your God.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. Deuteronomy 20:17 The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them.

10 “When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall [a]offer it terms of peace. 11 And if it [b]agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your (A)forced labor and serve you. 12 However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 When the Lord your God gives it into your hand, (B)you shall strike all the [c]men in it with the edge of the sword. 14 However, the women, the children, (C)the animals, and everything that is in the city, all of its spoils, you shall take as plunder for yourself; and you shall [d]use the spoils of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you. 15 This is what you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations [e]nearby. 16 (D)Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave anything that breathes alive. 17 Instead, you shall [f]utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 18 so that they will not teach you to do [g](E)all the same detestable practices of theirs which they have done for their gods, [h]by which you would (F)sin against the Lord your God.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. Deuteronomy 20:10 Lit call to it for peace
  2. Deuteronomy 20:11 Lit answers peace to you
  3. Deuteronomy 20:13 Lit males
  4. Deuteronomy 20:14 Lit eat
  5. Deuteronomy 20:15 Lit here
  6. Deuteronomy 20:17 Or put them under the ban
  7. Deuteronomy 20:18 Lit according to all the detestable
  8. Deuteronomy 20:18 Lit and you would