Deuteronomy 20: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses gives Israel rules for going to war. Before a battle a priest tells the army not to fear because the LORD goes with them, and officers send home any man who has a new house, a new vineyard, or a fiancée, along with any man who is afraid. Distant cities must first be offered peace; if they refuse, the men are killed and the rest taken as plunder, while the cities of the six nations in the land itself are to be completely destroyed so their religious practices are not copied. The chapter ends by forbidding the cutting down of fruit trees during a siege.

Claim by Claim

1. 20:1
   • When you go out to war against your enemies, this instruction applies.
   • You may see horses, chariots, and a people more numerous than you.
   • You are not to be afraid of them.
   • The reason not to fear is that the LORD your God is with you.
   • The LORD your God brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
2. 20:2
   • When you draw near to the battle, the priest is to come forward.
   • The priest is to speak to the people.
3. 20:3
   • The priest is to say to them, Hear, O Israel.
   • The priest is to say that they are drawing near this day to battle against their enemies.
   • The priest is to tell them not to let their heart grow soft.
   • The priest is to tell them not to fear.
   • The priest is to tell them not to be alarmed.
   • The priest is to tell them not to be terrified before their enemies.
4. 20:4
   • The LORD your God is the one who goes with you.
   • He goes to fight for you against your enemies.
   • He goes to save you.
5. 20:5
   • The officers are to speak to the people.
   • The officers are to ask what man has built a new house and not dedicated it.
   • Such a man is to go and return to his house.
   • The reason is that he might die in the battle and another man dedicate the house.
6. 20:6
   • The officers are to ask what man has planted a vineyard and not yet put its fruit to ordinary use.
   • Such a man is to go and return to his house.
   • The reason is that he might die in the battle and another man put its fruit to use.
7. 20:7
   • The officers are to ask what man has betrothed a woman and not taken her.
   • Such a man is to go and return to his house.
   • The reason is that he might die in the battle and another man take her.
8. 20:8
   • The officers are to speak further to the people.
   • The officers are to ask what man is afraid and soft of heart.
   • Such a man is to go and return to his house.
   • The reason is so that he does not melt the heart of his brothers as his own heart is melted.
9. 20:9
   • When the officers have finished speaking to the people, commanders of armies are to be appointed.
   • The commanders are to be set at the head of the people.
10. 20:10
    • When you draw near to a city to fight against it, this instruction applies.
    • You are to call out to that city with an offer of peace.
11. 20:11
    • If the city answers you with peace and opens to you, this applies.
    • All the people found in it shall become forced labor for you.
    • They shall serve you.
12. 20:12
    • If the city does not make peace with you but makes war against you, this applies.
    • You shall besiege it.
13. 20:13
    • The LORD your God will give the city into your hand.
    • You shall strike every male in it with the edge of the sword.
14. 20:14
    • The women, the little ones, the livestock, and everything in the city, all its spoil, you may take as plunder for yourself.
    • You shall consume the spoil of your enemies.
    • The LORD your God has given that spoil to you.
15. 20:15
    • You shall do this to all the cities that are very far from you.
    • These are the cities that do not belong to the nations nearby.
16. 20:16
    • The cities of these peoples are being given to you by the LORD your God as an inheritance.
    • In those cities you shall not let anything that breathes live.
17. 20:17
    • You shall devote them to complete destruction.
    • Those to be destroyed are the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
    • The LORD your God has commanded you to do this.
18. 20:18
    • The purpose is that they not teach you to do according to all their abominations.
    • They did those abominations for their gods.
    • The further purpose is that you not sin against the LORD your God.
19. 20:19
    • When you besiege a city for many days, fighting against it to capture it, this instruction applies.
    • You shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them.
    • You may eat from those trees.
    • You shall not cut those trees down.
    • The reason given is ambiguous: it either states that the tree of the field is man's life or food, or asks whether the tree of the field is a man, that it should come under siege before you.
20. 20:20
    • A tree that you know is not a food tree you may destroy and cut down.
    • You shall build siege works against the city that is making war with you.
    • You shall do so until the city falls.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1

Chariots were the most feared weapon of the age: fast, expensive platforms for archers, maintained by settled kingdoms with the wealth and flat terrain for them. Israel is pictured here as a foot army facing an enemy that has them.

20:2

Priests served at the sanctuary, handling sacrifice and ritual. A priest traveling with the army and addressing it before battle was standard practice; later Jewish tradition gave this figure a title, "the priest anointed for war."

20:3

"Hear, O Israel" is a set formula for a solemn public address to the whole nation, the same opening used in Deuteronomy 6:4.

20:5

"Officers" here translates a Hebrew word for civil officials, administrators and record-keepers who mustered the people. They are not the battlefield commanders, who are only appointed in verse 9. / Moving into a newly built house was marked by a dedication ceremony and feast; until that happened the builder had not yet properly taken possession of it.

20:6

Israelite law forbade eating the fruit of a newly planted vine for its first three years, and gave the fourth year's crop to God (Leviticus 19:23–25). A man who had just planted a vineyard therefore faced a wait of several years before his first harvest was his own.

20:7

Betrothal was a binding legal contract, much stronger than a modern engagement, ending it required a divorce. The woman normally stayed in her father's household until the husband "took" her, that is, brought her home and completed the marriage.

20:8

Ancient battle lines depended on men standing shoulder to shoulder. One soldier breaking and running could collapse the formation, so fear was treated as a practical danger to everyone else, not just a private failing.

20:9

The "officers" here are civil officials, record keepers and marshals who handled musters and announcements. The actual battlefield commanders are appointed only after these men have finished speaking.

20:10

An offer of peace before a siege was a formal demand for surrender on terms, not a truce or a peace treaty between equals. Accepting it meant opening the gates and submitting, as the next verse spells out.

20:11

The King James word "tributaries" does not mean people who pay tribute money. The Hebrew term means forced labor: conscripted work gangs put to state projects such as building and quarrying.

20:12

A siege is when an army surrounds a city so no food, water, or help can get in. Then it waits, sometimes for months or years, until the people inside give up or the walls are broken.

20:13

The Hebrew says simply "every male," without specifying age; some readers understand it as the fighting men, since the following verse deals separately with women and children, while others take it to include all males. The text does not settle the question.

20:14

"Spoil" is plunder: goods, animals and captives taken from a defeated city. Dividing it was the normal payment of an ancient army.

20:15

This verse divides the law into two parts. Cities far away got the peace offer just described. The nations already living in Canaan, listed in the next verses, were treated differently.

20:16

"Anything that breathes" is a stock Hebrew phrase for every living thing, people and animals alike.

20:17

"Utterly destroy" translates a Hebrew verb related to the noun *herem*: to put something permanently beyond ordinary human use by handing it over entirely, which in warfare meant killing the population and keeping no plunder. The practice was not unique to Israel, the Moabite king Mesha used the same word around 840 BC of what he did to an Israelite town. / The six names are the standard list for the population of Canaan before Israel's arrival. Some are tied to particular places (the Jebusites held Jerusalem), while "Canaanite" and "Amorite" are also used loosely for the region's inhabitants as a whole.

20:18

"Detestable things" renders a Hebrew word for practices regarded as repugnant. Here it refers to the worship customs of the local gods; elsewhere in Deuteronomy (12:31) the specific example given is child sacrifice.

20:19

The last clause of this verse is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew, which has no question mark. The same words can be read as a statement (the King James took it that way, "the tree of the field is man's life") or as a rhetorical question, "is the tree of the field a man, that you should besiege it?", which is how most modern translations read it. Both readings are defensible from the consonants on the page.

20:20

Siege works were built largely of timber: earth-and-rubble ramps faced with wood, mobile towers, screens to shelter attackers, and rams. That is why an army camped outside a city for months was a serious threat to its orchards.