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.

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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

10 When you approach a city to fight against it, you should first extend peaceful terms to it. 11 If the city responds with peaceful terms and surrenders to you, then all the people in the city will serve you as forced laborers. 12 However, if the city does not negotiate peacefully with you but makes war against you, you may attack it. 13 The Lord your God will hand it over to you; you must kill all the city’s males with the sword. 14 However, you can take for yourselves the women, the children, the animals, and all that is in the city—all its plunder. You can then enjoy your enemies’ plunder, which the Lord your God has given you.

15 That’s what you must do to all the cities that are located far away from you—specifically, those cities that don’t belong to these nations here. 16 But in the case of any of the cities of these peoples—the ones the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance—you must not spare any living thing. 17 Instead, you must place these under the ban:[a] Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord your God commanded you. 18 Then they can’t teach you to do all the detestable things they did for their gods, with the result that you end up sinning against the Lord your God.

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Footnotes

  1. Deuteronomy 20:17 See note at Deut 2:34.