Deuteronomy 20:1-20 NASB20 - Bible AI

¹“When you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses, chariots, and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you.

²When you are approaching the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people.

³He shall say to them, ‘Hear, Israel, you are approaching the battle against your enemies today. Do not be fainthearted. Do not be afraid, or panic, or be terrified by them,

⁴for the LORD your God is the One who is going with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.’

⁵The officers also shall speak to the people, saying, ‘Who is the man that has built a new house but has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would dedicate it.

⁶And who is the man that has planted a vineyard but has not [336]put it to use? Let him go and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man [337]would put it to use.

⁷And who is the man that is [338]betrothed to a woman and has not [339]married her? Let him go and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would [340]marry her.’

⁸Then the officers shall speak further to the people and say, ‘Who is the man that is afraid and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, so that [341]he does not make his brothers’ hearts melt like his heart!’

⁹And when the officers have finished speaking to the people, they shall appoint commanders of armies at the head of the people.

¹⁰“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall [342]offer it terms of peace.

¹¹And if it [343]agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and serve you.

¹²However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.

¹³When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the [344]men in it with the edge of the sword.

¹⁴However, the women, the children, the animals, and everything that is in the city, all of its spoils, you shall take as plunder for yourself; and you shall [345]use the spoils of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.

¹⁵This is what you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations [346]nearby.

¹⁶Only 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.

¹⁷Instead, you shall [347]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,

¹⁸so that they will not teach you to do [348]all the same detestable practices of theirs which they have done for their gods, [349]by which you would sin against the LORD your God.

¹⁹“When you besiege a city for a long time, to make war against it in order to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them; for you may eat from them, so you shall not cut them down. For [350]is the tree of the field a human, that it should [351]be besieged by you?

²⁰Only the trees that you know [352]are not fruit trees you shall destroy and cut down, so that you may construct siegeworks against the city that is making war against you until it falls.