8
The officers shall speak further to the people, and say, 'What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint like his heart.'
9
And so it shall be, when the officers have finished speaking to the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.
10
"When you go near a city to fight against it, then proclaim an offer of peace to it.
11
And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace, and open to you, then all the people who are found in it shall be placed under tribute to you, and serve you.
12
Now if the city will not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.
13
And when the Lord your God delivers it into your hands, you shall strike every male in it with the edge of the sword.
14
But the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself; and you shall eat the enemies' plunder which the Lord your God gives you.
15
Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16
But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive,
17
but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you,
18
lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.
19
"When you besiege a city for a long time, while making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; if you can eat of them, do not cut them down to use in the siege, for the tree of the field is man's food.
20
Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, to build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it is subdued.