Bible Strands
Deuteronomy 20:19
When you lay siege to a city for an extended time while fighting against it to capture it, you must not destroy its trees by putting an axe to them, because you can eat their fruit. You must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field human, that you should besiege them?
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Moses instructs the Israelite military commanders as they prepare for conquest, establishing wartime regulations for prolonged campaigns.
The words — תָצ֣וּר (ta.Tzur) translates to "you will lay siege" and עִיר֩ ('ir) means "a city," anchoring the command to a specific, extended military operation.
The thread — The prohibition against cutting fruit-bearing trees during warfare parallels the judgment imagery in Matthew 3:10 and Matthew 21:19, while the broader narrative of Israel's suffering under Egyptian labor appears in Deuteronomy 26:6.
Why it lands — The text explicitly forbids using axes on fruit trees to preserve food supplies and draws a direct distinction between human combatants and vegetation, limiting destructive action to non-fruiting trees only.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in the siege:
Cross-references
- Matthew 3:10 The axe lies ready at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
- Matthew 21:19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, He went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. “May you never bear fruit again!” He said. And immediately the tree withered.
- Deuteronomy 26:6 But the Egyptians mistreated us and afflicted us, putting us to hard labor.
- Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
- Luke 13:7 So he said to the keeper of the vineyard, ‘Look, for the past three years I have come to search for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Therefore cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’
- John 15:2 He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes to make it even more fruitful.