Deuteronomy 20:10-20 (New International Version)
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10
When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace.1
11
If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject2 to forced labor3 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.4
14
As for the women, the children, the livestock5 and everything else in the city,6 you may take these as plunder7 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 distance8 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.9
17
Completely destroya 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,10 and you will sin11 against the LORD your God.
19
When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees of the field people, that you should besiege them?b
20
However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees12 and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.
Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online)
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