20:1  "When you go out to battle against your enemies and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not fear them; for the LORD your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, goes with you.

20:2   "When you approach the battle, the priest shall come near and speak to the people.

20:3   "He shall say to them, 'Hear, O Israel, you approach the battle against your enemies today. Do not show faintheartedness. Do not fear, or panic, or tremble before them,

20:4   for the LORD your God goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.'

20:5  "The officers also shall speak to the people, saying, 'Who builds a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him depart and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would dedicate it.

20:6  'Who has planted a vineyard and has not begun to use its fruit? Let him depart and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would begin to use its fruit.

20:7   ' And who has become engaged to a woman and has not married her? Let him depart and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would marry her.'

20:8   "Then the officers shall speak further to the people and say, ' Who shows fear and faintheartedness? Let him depart and return to his house, so that he might not make his brothers' hearts melt like his heart.'

20:9   "When the officers have finished speaking to the people, they shall appoint commanders of armies at the head of the people.

20:10   "When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace.

20:11   "If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who dwell in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you.

20:12   "However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.

20:13   "When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword.

20:14  "Only the women and the children and the animals and all that dwell in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.

20:15   "Thus you shall do to all the cities that lie very far from you, which do not consist of the cities of these nations nearby.

20:16   " Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.

20:17   "But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,

20:18   so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God.

20:19   "When you besiege a city 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, and you shall not cut them down. For the tree of the field does not resemble a man that you should besiege it.

20:20   "Only the trees which you recognize as not fruit-bearing trees you shall destroy and cut down, that you may construct siegeworks against the city making war with you until it falls.