Deuteronomy 20
Hear, O Israel, you draw near this day to battle against your enemies
Moses now gives the people commands on how they should operate when it comes time for war. He gives them instruction on how to prepare, as well as how to treat the cities they come upon to attack, both in the land of Canaan, and to nations they may attack later outside the land of Canaan.
Bible Passage:
20:1 When you go forth to battle against your enemies, and see horses, and chariots, and a people more than you, you shall not be afraid of them. For YAHWEH your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. 2 And it shall be, when you draw near to the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak to the people, 3 and shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel, you draw near this day to battle against your enemies. Do not let your heart faint; fear not, nor tremble, neither be afraid of them. 4 For YAHWEH your God is he that goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. 5 And the officers shall speak to the people, saying, ‘What man is there that has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. 6 And what man is there that has planted a vineyard, and has not used the fruit of it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man use the fruit of it. 7 And what man is there that has betrothed a wife, and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.’ 8 And the officers shall speak further to the people, and they shall say, ‘What man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest his brothers’ heart melt as his heart.’ 9 And it shall be, when the officers have made an end of speaking to the people, that they shall appoint captains of hosts at the head of the people.
10 When you draw near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it. 11 And it shall be, if it makes you an answer of peace, and opens to you, then it shall be, that all the people that are found in it shall become tributary to you, and shall serve you. 12 If it will make no peace with you, but will make war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 When YAHWEH your God delivers it into your hand, you shall smite every male of it with the edge of the sword, 14 but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil of it, you shall take for a prey for yourself. You shall eat the spoil of your enemies, which YAHWEH your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far off from you, which are not of the cities of these nations. 16 But of the cities of these peoples, that YAHWEH your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes; 17 but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as YAHWEH your God has commanded you; 18 that they not teach you to do after all their abominations, which they have done for their gods; so you would sin against YAHWEH your God.
19 When you shall besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy the trees of it by wielding an axe against them. For you may eat of them, and you shall not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged by you? 20 Only the trees of which you know that they are not trees for food, you shall destroy and cut them down; and you shall build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it fall.
Reflection:
I am glad that God doesn’t endorse scorched earth military policy. God wants the land to be inhabitable and productive after the besiegement of a city. If they destroyed all the fruit trees before the city was conquered, they would not be able to provide any sustenance once the army had taken over the city. It is also a reminder that YAHWEH cares about the land and what happens to it. God ultimately does not want the people to give in to the fullness of how dark war can be. Obviously, he has different intentions for what should happen in Canaan, but even in the midst of war, the destruction that often accompanies it should not be pursued as Israel’s standard wartime procedure. There should be attempts at peace, mercy if the people surrender, and there should not be an intentional destruction of the land.
Questions and Answers:
Verse 1: What is Egypt? [Sophia, 3]
Egypt is a country in northeast Africa that was home to one of the most ancient civilizations in human history. As it relates to the history of the Bible, it is said to be one of the nations that descended from Ham in Genesis 10. Some English translations don’t translate the name in the sons of Ham because the Hebrew for Egypt is “Mitzraim,” so they leave that in Genesis 10.
Egypt is important in the Torah specifically because Egypt is the nation in which the Israelites were enslaved. So Moses is reminding the people to not be afraid of any of these other smaller nations because YAHWEH was able to defeat a great empire like Egypt and take the Israelites out of its midst and free them during the Exodus. This is a reminder to the people to not be afraid.
Verse 3: What does faint-hearted mean? [Gwendolyn, 9]
The Hebrew word “rakak” means “to be tender,” “to be soft,” or “to be weak.” Here the connotation has to do with having fear because of the enemies they are going out to face in battle. So “weak-hearted” is the one that makes the most sense of those in this context. To be “tender-hearted” could be misconstrued in English to sound like the command is to not have any mercy on their enemies, when it actually has to do with being afraid. “Faint-hearted” works great as a translation because it elicits that the people should not be cowardly, or lack courage.
Verse 8: What does verse 8 mean about being faint-hearted? [Monique, 33]
This verse is actually about excusing warriors from battle who are afraid. It seems like this might be counter-productive because you are losing men who could fight, but the point of these exclusions from the officers is that they only want men fully committed to the war, there shouldn’t be other things occupying your mind. On top of that, as they explicitly say, they don’t want the fear of faint-hearted men to take hold in their brothers, so that more and more people also become filled with fear. Most importantly of all, the military reality of Israel was never supposed to rely on strength of numbers, or the best military technology, or the best intelligence apparatus, it was always supposed to be based on trusting and knowing that YAHWEH was the one fighting for the people.
These exclusions here make me think of Judges 7. In that chapter, Gideon is getting ready to free Israel from the oppression of the Midianites, but YAHWEH knows they will believe they freed themselves if there are that many of them. So YAHWEH continues to give instruction to Gideon to reduce the number of Israelites involved in the war effort. That way when the battle is won for Israel, they will know that YAHWEH was the one who secured the victory, not Israel itself.
Verse 20: What type of a thing is siegeworks? [Gwendolyn, 9]
The Hebrew here is interesting. The word here is “matzor,” taken from the root verb “tzur.” “Tzur” is a root verb that means “to secure something,” usually something very valuable. When this verb becomes a noun, it becomes the word “matzor.” When that word is used in the context of war or military action, then it talks about many different things that are used “to secure something valuable.” It is used both defensively and offensively. So, on the defensive side, it could refer to a city being “fortified,” having “ramparts,” or even having “walls,” although there are other words for that specifically. Offensively, it can talk about creating a “siege” on a city, making an “entrenchment” to surround the city, or building “siegeworks.”
In this case, “matzor,” or siegeworks, could be many things, but it is clear that we are talking about Israel doing the besieging of the city, so it refers to offensive structures. Really, anything you might use a cut-down tree to make that would assist you in besieging a city. My guess is it could refer to a battering ram to break down gates. It could also be about building external towers that are taller than the city walls so archers could stand on the platforms and shoot down into the city at the people trapped inside. Since these earlier Israelite times, a lot more siegeworks have been developed, catapults and ballistae, all kinds of things. The point God is making is for them to not waste the productive trees of the land while trying to conquer a city, those trees could provide for you once you take over the land.
Recording of the Passage:
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