19 “When you besiege a city for a long time, to make war against it in order to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them; for you may eat from them, so you shall not cut them down. For [a]is the tree of the field a human, that it should [b]be besieged by you? 20 Only the trees that you know [c]are not fruit trees you shall destroy and cut down, so that you may construct siegeworks against the city that is making war against you until it falls.

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Footnotes

  1. Deuteronomy 20:19 Read as interrogative with ancient versions; MT the tree of the field is man
  2. Deuteronomy 20:19 Lit come before you in the siege
  3. Deuteronomy 20:20 Lit that it is not a tree of food

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