Fruit Trees

How Nave’s arranged it

• Care forDeuteronomy 20:19Deuteronomy 20:20

The passages, in Bible order (2)

The same references, sorted Genesis to Revelation. The first 2 are quoted in full; the rest are one click beneath them, book by book.

1. Deuteronomy 20:19

   When you lay siege to a city for an extended time while fighting against it to capture it, you must not destroy its trees by putting an axe to them, because you can eat their fruit. You must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field human, that you should besiege them?

   ›Commentary on Deuteronomy 20:192 voices

   “But fruit-bearing trees were to be carefully spared; and, indeed, in warm countries like India, where the people live much more on fruit than we do, the destruction of a fruit tree is considered a sort of sacrilege.

   “The Logos in his goodness, richly equipped with love of humankind, teaches that it is not right to cut down cultivated trees, still less to cut crops for purposes of vandalism before harvest, and even less still to destroy, root and branch, cultivated fruit, whether of the land or of the soul. It does not even allow the razing of enemy land. Yes, and farmers find their profit from the law.

   Everything gathered on Deuteronomy 20:19→

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2. Deuteronomy 20:20

   But you may destroy the trees that you know do not produce fruit. Use them to build siege works against the city that is waging war against you, until it falls.

   ›Commentary on Deuteronomy 20:202 voices

   “Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat,....

   “When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it--An important principle is here introduced into the war law of Israel regarding the people they fought against and the cities they besieged. With "the cities of those people which God doth give thee" in Canaan, it was to be a war of utter extermination (De 20:17, 18).

   Everything gathered on Deuteronomy 20:20→

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