Study Desk

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

When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

"And if it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and serve you.

And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

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

And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

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

And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

"However, the women, the children, the animals, and everything that is in the city, all of its spoils, you shall take as plunder for yourself; and you shall use the spoils of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.

But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

"This is what you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby.

Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

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

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

"Instead, you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the LORD your God has commanded you,

But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee:

so that they will not teach you to do all the same detestable practices of theirs which they have done for their gods, by which you would sin against the LORD your God.

That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God.