The rules of war

Albert Barnes, in his Notes on Deuteronomy 20:5, says that the release of the man with a new house lasted one year. He sets it beside the release of the betrothed man and of the new husband of Deuteronomy 24:5.

Adam Clarke, on Deuteronomy 24:5, notes that other peoples made a like provision, and he cites Arrian for Alexander's order that soldiers married that year should winter with their wives. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown judge the law favourable to marriage, since it gave the couple's affection time to take root.

Albert Barnes, on Deuteronomy 23:9, applies the passage to the campaigns Israel would send out from Canaan, rather than to the camps of the wilderness.

Charles Spurgeon, preaching on Deuteronomy 23:14 in his sermon Camp Law and Camp Life, reads the law of Israel's camp in the wilderness. He calls it a sanitary rule of the wisest kind, and he admires that the All-Holy God would make laws about such things.

Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki of Troyes (1040 to 1105), the standard medieval Jewish commentator on the Torah, reads the chapter with the Talmud and the earlier rabbis. He gives the priest of Deuteronomy 20:2 the Talmud's title, the priest anointed for war, after Sotah 42a.

On Deuteronomy 20:8 Rashi divides the speech between two voices. The priest spoke the three questions about the house, the vineyard and the bride quietly and the officers proclaimed them, and the question about fear the officers both spoke and proclaimed, after Sotah 43a.

Rashi holds that the law of the captive belongs to a war that is not obligatory, since Deuteronomy 20:16 let no one in the cities of the land live.

He reads the words about her nails as letting them grow, so that she would become unattractive to her captor. He takes the clothing of her captivity to be the finery worn to lure the enemy. The Berean text reads trim her nails, and Adam Clarke reports that learned men doubt whether paring or growing is meant.

The Hebrew text counts the verse that opens the camp law as Deuteronomy 23:10, where the Berean text has Deuteronomy 23:9. On it Rashi says that the soldier must keep himself from evil because Satan accuses men in a time of danger, citing the Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbat 2:6.

On Deuteronomy 24:5 he reads the new wife as one new to her husband, a widow included. He excludes a man who remarries the wife he had divorced, after Sifrei Devarim 271:1 and Sotah 44a.

Rashi reads Deuteronomy 20:10 as the rule of a war that is not obligatory, citing Sifrei Devarim 199:1, and he finds the proof in the cities far away of Deuteronomy 20:15. On Deuteronomy 20:11 he allows that people of the seven nations found in such a city may be kept alive.

Albert Barnes keeps the same line between the two kinds of war. In his Notes on Deuteronomy 21:10 he writes that the wars of the captive law are wars against neighbouring nations, fought after Israel had destroyed the Canaanites.

Joshua 11:19 weighs against this reading, because it counts the cities that made peace as if any city of the land might have done so.

Matthew Henry, on Joshua 11:19, says that the other cities might have made as good terms for themselves if they had humbled themselves, but they never so much as desired conditions of peace.

Adam Clarke reports that interpreters are greatly divided over Deuteronomy 20:10, and he grants that the bare letter limits the offer to cities beyond the seven nations. On Joshua 11:20 he calls the cities' refusal of peace the proof that they held to their idols. John Wesley, on Joshua 6:25, sees in Rahab an exception for any who cast off their wickedness and submitted.

Rashi, who limits the offer of Deuteronomy 20:10 to distant cities, still reads Deuteronomy 20:18 to mean that those nations could be received if they repented and became proselytes, after Sifrei Devarim 202:1. Henry also weighs the message Moses sent to Sihon in Deuteronomy 2:26.

Against this reading stand Deuteronomy 20:15 to 16, which set the distant cities apart from those of the land, and the order of Deuteronomy 7:2 to make no treaty with the nations of the land.

John Gill, in his Exposition of the Old Testament on Deuteronomy 20:16, gives the reason for the severity as the nations' capital crimes, among them idolatry, witchcraft and necromancy. He says they were kept for this destruction until the measure of their iniquities was full.

The strongest objection is that Exodus 23:29 to 30 has the LORD drive the nations out little by little, and Deuteronomy 7:3 forbids marriage with them, so the law expects some to remain.

Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible on Deuteronomy 20:17, proposes rendering the verb as utterly subduing the nations. They would be slain if they resisted, expelled from the land or reduced to slavery in it, so that they no longer existed as a people.

Joshua 11:20 weighs against this reading.