Discovery BoxDeuteronomy 20:10-16
Context20:10 When you approach a city to wage war against it, offer it terms of peace. 20:11 If it accepts your terms 1 and submits to you, all the people found in it will become your slaves. 2 20:12 If it does not accept terms of peace but makes war with you, then you are to lay siege to it. 20:13 The Lord your God will deliver it over to you 3 and you must kill every single male by the sword. 20:14 However, the women, little children, cattle, and anything else in the city – all its plunder – you may take for yourselves as spoil. You may take from your enemies the plunder that the Lord your God has given you. 20:15 This is how you are to deal with all those cities located far from you, those that do not belong to these nearby nations.
20:16 As for the cities of these peoples that 4 the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing 5 to survive.
[20:11] 1 tn Heb “if it answers you peace.”
[20:11] 2 tn Heb “become as a vassal and will serve you.” The Hebrew term translated slaves (מַס, mas) refers either to Israelites who were pressed into civil service, especially under Solomon (1 Kgs 5:27; 9:15, 21; 12:18), or (as here) to foreigners forced as prisoners of war to become slaves to Israel. The Gibeonites exemplify this type of servitude (Josh 9:3-27; cf. Josh 16:10; 17:13; Judg 1:28, 30-35; Isa 31:8; Lam 1:1).
[20:13] 3 tn Heb “to your hands.”
[20:16] 4 tn The antecedent of the relative pronoun is “cities.”
