Deuteronomy 20:20

20 However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.

Deuteronomy 20:20 in Other Translations

20 Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.

20 Only the trees that you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.

20 You may only cut down trees that you know are not valuable for food. Use them to make the equipment you need to attack the enemy town until it falls.

20 The exception can be those trees which don't produce food; you can chop them down and use the timbers to build siege engines against the town that is resisting you until it falls.

20 But you may destroy the trees that you know do not produce food. You may cut them down to build siege works against the city that is waging war with you, until it falls.

Deuteronomy 20:20 Meaning and Commentary

Deuteronomy 20:20

Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for
meat Which might be known not only by their not having fruit upon
them, but by other tokens, and even at a time of year when there was no fruit on any, which might be sometimes the season of a siege:

thou shalt destroy and cut them down;
if so to do was of any disservice to the enemy, or of any service to them, as follows; they had a liberty to destroy them if they would:

and thou shall build bulwarks against the city that maketh war, until
it be subdued;
build bulwarks of the trees cut down, and raise batteries with them, or make machines and engines of the wood of them, to cast stones into the city to annoy the inhabitants of it, in order to make them surrender, and until they do it. All this may be an emblem of the axe being to be laid to fruitless trees in a moral and spiritual sense; and of trees of righteousness, laden with the fruits of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, being preserved and never to be cut down or rooted up; see ( Matthew 3:10 ) ( Isaiah 60:3 ) ( Matthew 15:13 ) .

Deuteronomy 20:20 In-Context

18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin 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 people, that you should besiege them?

20 However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.

Cross References

• 1. Jeremiah 6:6