Deuteronomy 20
Deuteronomy 20 is the law for going to war, and the first thing to notice is what it does not say. It does not begin with strategy, numbers, or weapons. It begins with a fear and a remedy: When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt (v. 1). The horses and chariots were the heavy armor of the ancient world, the very thing a footsoldier dreaded most - and the very thing that had drowned in the sea behind Israel on the way out of Egypt. The command is not to pretend the danger away but to set a larger fact against it: the One who already broke Egypt's chariots is the One who goes with them now.3
What follows is unlike any other ancient war code. A priest, not a commander, gives the charge, and his words name only one thing: God's presence (vv. 2-4). Then the officers send four kinds of men home - the one who built a house and has not dedicated it, planted a vineyard and not eaten of it, betrothed a wife and not taken her, and the one who is simply fearful and fainthearted (vv. 5-8). An army shaped this way could only ever win by the hand of God, never by sheer mass. After this comes the law of the distant city, where the first move is always the same: proclaim peace unto it (v. 10). Judgment is never God's opening word.
The chapter does not flinch from hard ground. The cities of the nations already in the land stand under a bounded judgment, executed once, for a stated reason: that they teach you not to do after all their abominations (v. 18) - a measure long held back until the wickedness of those nations had run its full course. It is never offered as a model for any later war; the text keeps it tied to that one hour and that one purpose. And even in this severe passage, mercy shows itself: in the long siege the fruit tree is to be spared, for the tree of the field is man's life (v. 19). A God who restrains the axe even in war is a God whose judgments are never careless.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Deuteronomy 20:1-9Be Not Afraid · The LORD Goeth With You
1When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 2And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, 3And shall say unto them, Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; 4For the LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. 5And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. 6And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not yet eaten of it? let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eat of it. 7And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her. 8And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart. 9And it shall be, when the officers have made an end of speaking unto the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.
The law opens with the precise moment fear takes hold: When thou goest out to battle… and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou (v. 1). Each item names a real disadvantage. In the ancient world the war-chariot was the heaviest weapon there was, the thing a man on foot had almost no answer for; cavalry could outrun and outflank infantry; and sheer numbers could simply overwhelm. Israel, marching in mostly without such things, would feel every bit of the gap. The command does not deny the danger or tell the soldier he should not feel it. It sets one larger fact against the whole of it: be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. The mention of Egypt is no throwaway line. The last time Israel faced massed horses and chariots, they stood trapped at the sea - and watched those chariots sink. The God who broke Pharaoh's armor is the same God going out with them now. The remedy for fear is not a bigger army; it is a longer memory.3
Notice who steps forward to address the troops on the eve of battle: the priest shall approach and speak unto the people (v. 2). Not the general, not the king - the priest. And his charge is striking for what it leaves out. He says nothing about the enemy's weakness or Israel's strength, nothing tactical at all. He piles up four ways of saying one thing - let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them (v. 3) - and then names the single ground for all of it: the LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you (v. 4). That is the entire theology of Israel's warfare in one sentence. The battle is the LORD's; the people's part is to trust and not to faint. Fear wants to flood the heart and make the odds look final. The priest stands in front of the army and, before a sword is drawn, names the One who is already there. Courage in Scripture is rarely the absence of fear; it is fear answered by a greater certainty.
Then the officers do something no other ancient army would dream of: they begin sending soldiers home. Three exemptions come first, and each one protects an unfinished good thing in a man's life. The man who has built a new house, and hath not dedicated it (v. 5) - who has not yet moved in and begun life under that roof - is sent back, lest he die and another man dedicate it. The man who has planted a vineyard, and hath not yet eaten of it (v. 6) is sent home; a vineyard takes years to bear, and the one who waited for it should be the one to taste it. And the man who has betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her (v. 7) is released to go and marry; the covenant of marriage is too good a thing to be cut off before it has even begun. The logic is the same each time: the home, the harvest, the marriage are not expendable to the war machine. War may sometimes be necessary, but the ordinary goods of a human life - shelter, fruit, love - are sacred, and God will not let them be swallowed up cheaply. An army built on these rules could never be a juggernaut. It could only ever win the way Israel was meant to win - by the hand of God.
The fourth exemption is the most surprising of all, because it lets a man leave for no reason but his own heart: What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house (v. 8). No army of conquest releases its frightened men; fear is exactly what officers are usually trained to override. But here the soldier whose courage has failed is sent home without shame, and the stated reason is mercy toward the others: lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart. Fear is contagious. One trembling man in the ranks can hollow out the resolve of the men beside him, and God will not have the army eaten away from within. There is something tender in this too. The fearful man is not punished; he is simply not made to carry what he cannot. Only after these four words have thinned the ranks are leaders appointed: they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people (v. 9). The order matters. First the heart of the army is set right - freed of distraction, freed of dread - and only then is it organized for battle. What is left is small, willing, and unafraid, the kind of force that can only be explained by the One who fights for it.
Deuteronomy 20:10-15Proclaim Peace Unto It
10When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. 11And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. 12And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: 13And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: 14But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee. 15Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
Before a single siege-ramp is raised, the law fixes the first move, and it is not an attack: When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it (v. 10). The word order is deliberate. The soldiers may be drawn up to fight, the city may be fully in their power to assault - and still the first thing they must do is offer terms. Judgment is never God's opening word. And the offer is real: if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, the city is not destroyed at all; its people shall be tributaries… and they shall serve thee (v. 11). They live. They keep their homes. The whole calamity of war is averted the moment the city is willing to receive peace. Only if a city will make no peace… but will make war (v. 12) does the siege follow. The point worth sitting with is the order itself: peace held out first, freely, to a city that has done nothing yet to deserve mercy. That is the shape of how God deals with the world - the offer goes out before the sword is ever drawn, and many who could be destroyed are spared simply because they did not refuse it.
For the city that chooses war, verses 13 and 14 describe what follows, and the text does not soften it: when the LORD delivers the city, the fighting men - every male thereof - are struck, while the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all… the spoil are preserved (vv. 13-14). These are sober verses, and they belong to a world whose warfare was brutal in ways modern readers rightly recoil from. But two things in the text deserve notice rather than a rush past them. First, this is the harshest outcome only for a city that has been offered peace and refused it, choosing instead to make war (v. 12); the destruction is not the first word but the last resort. Second, even here a real limit is drawn: the non-combatants are not to be killed but spared, and the city's wealth becomes provision rather than being burned in spite. By the standards of the ancient world, where the total annihilation of a defeated city was common boasting, this is a code that already pulls war back from its worst impulses. It is not a vision of peace - war is still war - but it is a war hedged about with offered mercy at the front and preserved life at the end.
Verse 15 quietly marks off exactly how far this law of offered peace reaches: Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. This whole protocol - proclaim peace first, spare the city that submits, preserve the women and children even of a city that fights - governs the distant cities, the ones outside the borders of the land Israel was given. It is the general rule for Israel's dealings with the nations around them, and its default posture is the offer of peace. This matters enormously for reading what comes next. The far more severe command of verses 16-18 is not the pattern for how Israel is to treat the nations at large; it is a deliberate, bounded exception, marked off here by this very verse. The reader is being told, in advance, that the ordinary law of war for Israel begins with peace, and that the cities within the land stand under a special and limited judgment for reasons the text is about to give. Verse 15 is the hinge that keeps the two from being confused.3
Deuteronomy 20:16-20The Cities of the Nations · The Tree of the Field
16But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: 17But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: 18That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God. 19When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege: 20Only 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.
Here the law turns to its hardest ground, and honesty requires that we let the text speak plainly rather than soften it. The cities of these people - the nations already living in the land given to Israel for an inheritance - stand under a far more severe command than the distant cities of verses 10-15: thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth (v. 16). This is the measure sometimes called the “devotion to destruction.” It is grievous, and Scripture does not present it as a casual or ordinary thing. What the text does do is frame it carefully, in three ways the reader should hold together. First, it is bounded: it names six specific nations (v. 17) in one specific land at one specific moment, not war in general. Second, it is set against the immediately preceding law, where Israel's ordinary dealing with cities was to proclaim peace first (v. 10) - so this is the marked exception, not the rule. Third, and most importantly, the very next verse states its reason, and the reason is not plunder, pride, or hatred of a people. It is preservation. The whole weight of the command rests on the purpose given in verse 18, and the text wants that purpose read before any conclusion is drawn.3
Verse 18 gives the entire rationale, and it is worth weighing slowly: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God. The danger is named exactly - not the existence of these nations as such, but the pull of their religious practices, the abominations… done unto their gods. Scripture elsewhere is explicit about what those practices included: child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, divination, and the burning of sons and daughters in the fire (Lev. 18:21-25; Deut. 12:31). And the command did not fall out of nowhere. Generations earlier, God had told Abraham his descendants would not yet take the land, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full (Gen. 15:16) - a stunning line that shows God waiting four centuries, withholding judgment until the wickedness had run its full and unmistakable course. The land itself is said to vomit out its inhabitants for what they did (Lev. 18:25). So this is not portrayed as ethnic conquest for territory; it is portrayed as a long-delayed judgment on a specific and extreme corruption, executed once, with the stated aim of keeping that corruption from devouring Israel too. The point of the command is not Israel's greatness but Israel's preservation - that the people meant to bless all nations not be hollowed out by the very evils they were sent to displace. Crucially, the text never holds this out as a model for any later war or as a principle to be carried forward; it ties it tightly to that one hour, that one land, and that one purpose, and there it leaves it.
And then, in the middle of the chapter's most severe passage, comes one of the most unexpected mercies in the law: even in a long siege, the fruit trees are to be spared. When thou shalt besiege a city a long time… thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (v. 19). The standard tactic of ancient siege warfare was to strip the countryside bare - to fell every tree for ramps and engines and firewood, and to ruin the land so the enemy could never recover. Here God forbids it, and the reason He gives is extraordinary: for the tree of the field is man's life. The fruit tree feeds people; it took years to grow; it will feed people again long after the siege is over. It is not to be sacrificed to the appetite of war. Only trees that bear no food may be used for the siege-works (v. 20). The restraint is the thing to notice. Even in the chapter that contains the hardest command in the book, God draws a line that war is not allowed to cross. His judgments, even at their most severe, are never wanton; He remembers the orchard and the generations who will eat from it. A God who will not let an army waste a fruit tree is a God whose severity is always bounded by mercy.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 20 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the priest's charge that the LORD goeth with you… to fight for you (v. 4), for the exemptions sending home the unfinished and the fearful (vv. 5-8), and for the much-discussed phrase the tree of the field is man's life (v. 19) and the command not to destroy it.
- Deuteronomy 20 ↔ Romans 8 · Ephesians 2 · 2 Peter 3Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Deuteronomy 20 to the rest of Scripture - the LORD who goeth with you… to save you (v. 4) read alongside if God be for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31); peace proclaimed to a city before any siege (v. 10) beside the gospel of peace preached… to you which were afar off (Eph. 2:17); and the bounded judgment on the nations (vv. 16-18) beside the iniquity that was not yet full in Genesis 15:16.
- Deuteronomy 20 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Deuteronomy 20 - the horses and chariots that made Israel feel outmatched (v. 1), the legal force of the exemptions (vv. 5-8), the offer of peace required before a distant siege (v. 10), and the term often rendered “devote to destruction” that governs the cities of the nations (vv. 16-17).
Where this echoes in Scripture
Be Not Afraid · The LORD Goeth With You
- Exodus 14:13-14Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD... The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.The pattern behind verses 1-4 - at the sea, the LORD fights and Israel need only not be afraid.
- Psalm 20:7Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.The exact contrast of verse 1 - chariots and horses set against trust in the LORD who goes with His people.
- Romans 8:31If God be for us, who can be against us?The assurance of verse 4 carried to its end - the God who goes with His people answers every fear.
- Hebrews 13:5-6I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear.The promise of verse 4 made the ground of courage for every believer - He goes with us still.
- Joshua 1:9Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid... for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.The charge of verses 1-4 spoken to Joshua as Israel finally crosses into the land.
Proclaim Peace Unto It
- Ephesians 2:17And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.The far-off cities of verses 10-15 read in the gospel key - peace preached first, even to those at a distance.
- 2 Peter 3:9The Lord is... not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.The heart behind verse 10 - God’s longsuffering, holding out peace before any reckoning.
- Luke 10:5And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house.The motion of verse 10 given to the disciples - the first word is always peace.
- Isaiah 52:7How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him... that publisheth peace.The herald of peace of verse 10 - the proclaimed offer that goes out before the sword.
- Romans 12:18If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.The posture of verse 10 turned toward the reader - the first move toward peace is ours to make.
The Cities of the Nations · The Tree of the Field
- Genesis 15:16But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.The frame for verses 16-18 - God waiting four centuries until the wickedness of the nations had run its full course.
- Leviticus 18:24-25the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.The abominations of verse 18 named - the corruption for which the land itself is said to expel its people.
- Romans 12:19Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.The judgment of verses 16-18 kept where it belongs - God’s alone, never the pattern for His people’s own hands.
- Ezekiel 18:32For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live.The heart behind the spared tree of verse 19 - a God whose judgments are never wanton.
- 2 Peter 3:15And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation.The patience behind verses 16-18 - the long delay of judgment that is itself an open door of mercy.