Deuteronomy20chapter 20

Deuteronomy 20:1-4

Hear, O Israel opens the priest's charge at verse 3, the fourth and last time the phrase falls in this book after 5:1, 6:4 and 9:1, and the other three open teaching rather than a battle. Horses and chariots are named as the thing not to fear, and 17:16 forbids a king to gather them, so the same arms are denied to the throne and discounted in the field. The ground given for courage is a past event, that God brought them up out of the land of Egypt, which is how this book argues everywhere. Jewish tradition gave the priest of verse 2 a title of his own, the anointed of the war, and Matthew Henry takes up the name.

Deuteronomy 20:5-9

Three men are sent home over things left unfinished: a new house not dedicated, a vineyard not eaten of, a wife betrothed and not taken. The reason given each time is the same, lest he die in the battle and another man have it, so the release guards the man's stake in the land rather than his life. 24:5 gives a newly married man a full year at home, and Albert Barnes reads the same one year limit into this list. The fourth case stands apart, since the fearful and fainthearted go home for the sake of the ranks, and Judges 7:3 has Gideon use those words and watch twenty and two thousand men leave.

Deuteronomy 20:10-15

The order is peace first and siege second, and the offer is made before the city is invested. A city that answers peace becomes tributary and serves, so its people live under Israel rather than beside it. Verse 15 then limits the whole paragraph to cities very far off, which are not of the cities of these nations, and Adam Clarke reports that interpreters have long divided over how wide the peace offer runs. Moses had already done this at 2:26, sending words of peace to Sihon king of Heshbon before any fighting.

Deuteronomy 20:16-18

The near cities are given no such offer, and verse 18 supplies the reason, that they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods. Six nations are named here where 7:1 names seven, the Girgashites being absent from this list. Genesis 15:16 had already tied the timing to the iniquity of the Amorites, which was not yet full in Abraham's day. Adam Clarke argues that the Hebrew verb can carry the sense of subduing or expelling a people out of national existence, and John Gill reads the sentence as judgment on capital crimes long accumulated.

Deuteronomy 20:19-20

The axe is forbidden against fruit trees and allowed against the rest, so the line drawn is between what feeds a man and what does not. The King James supplies the word life in the clause for the tree of the field is man's life, and Matthew Henry reports that the Septuagint, the Targums and the older versions read the clause as a question, is the tree of the field a man that it should come against thee in the siege. Adam Clarke calls the Hebrew here exceedingly obscure and sets the renderings side by side. Under either reading the rule holds, that a besieging army may eat of the trees and may not fell them for its works.