The Wilderness Years

saying to them, “Hear, O Israel, today you are going into battle with your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid; do not be alarmed or terrified because of them.

For the LORD your God goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.”

Furthermore, the officers are to address the army, saying, “Has any man built a new house and not dedicated it? Let him return home, or he may die in battle and another man dedicate it.

Has any man planted a vineyard and not begun to enjoy its fruit? Let him return home, or he may die in battle and another man enjoy its fruit.

Has any man become pledged to a woman and not married her? Let him return home, or he may die in battle and another man marry her.”

Then the officers shall speak further to the army, saying, “Is any man afraid or fainthearted? Let him return home, so that the hearts of his brothers will not melt like his own.”

When the officers have finished addressing the army, they are to appoint commanders to lead it.

When you approach a city to fight against it, you are to make an offer of peace.

If they accept your offer of peace and open their gates, all the people there will become forced laborers to serve you.

But if they refuse to make peace with you and wage war against you, lay siege to that city.

When the LORD your God has delivered it into your hand, you must put every male to the sword.

But the women, children, livestock, and whatever else is in the city—all its spoil—you may take as plunder, and you shall use the spoil of your enemies that the LORD your God gives you.

This is how you are to treat all the cities that are far away from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

However, in the cities of the nations that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not leave alive anything that breathes.

For you must devote them to complete destruction—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you,

so that they cannot teach you to do all the detestable things they do for their gods, and so cause you to sin against the LORD your God.

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?

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.

If one is found slain, lying in a field in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him,

your elders and judges must come out and measure the distance from the victim to the neighboring cities.

Then the elders of the city nearest the victim shall take a heifer that has never been yoked or used for work,

bring the heifer to a valley with running water that has not been plowed or sown, and break its neck there by the stream.

And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to serve Him and pronounce blessings in His name and to give a ruling in every dispute and case of assault.

Then all the elders of the city nearest the victim shall wash their hands by the stream over the heifer whose neck has been broken,

and they shall declare, “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it.