¹⁰When you march up to attack a city, first make them an offer of peace. ¹¹If they accept your offer and open their gates to you, all the people of that city will become your slaves and work for you. ¹²But if they do not make peace with you and fight you in battle, you should surround that city. ¹³The Lord your God will give it to you. Then kill all the men with your swords, ¹⁴and you may take everything else in the city for yourselves. Take the women, children, and animals, and you may use these things the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. ¹⁵Do this to all the cities that are far away, that do not belong to the nations nearby.

¹⁶But leave nothing alive in the cities of the land the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁷Completely destroy these people: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded. ¹⁸Otherwise, they will teach you what they do for their gods, and if you do these hateful things, you will sin against the Lord your God.

¹⁹If you surround and attack a city for a long time, trying to capture it, do not destroy its trees with an ax. You can eat the fruit from the trees, but do not cut them down. These trees are not the enemy, so don’t make war against them. ²⁰But you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build devices to attack the city walls, until the city is captured.

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