10 “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, ^poffer terms of peace to it. 11 And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. 12 But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, ^qyou shall put all its males to the sword, 14 ^rbut the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you ^sshall take as plunder for yourselves. And ^tyou shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. 16 But ^uin the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but ^vyou shall devote them to complete destruction,¹ the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, 18 that ^wthey may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you ^xsin against the Lord your God.

19 “When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, ^yyou shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. You may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field human, that they should be besieged by you? 20 Only the trees that you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.

1 “If in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess someone is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him, 2 then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities. 3 And the elders of the city that is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer ^zthat has never been worked and that has not pulled in a yoke. 4 And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. 5 Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the Lord your God has chosen ^athem to minister to him and to bless in the name of the Lord, and ^bby their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled. 6 And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man ^cshall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, 7 and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. 8 Accept atonement, O Lord, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and ^ddo not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for.’ 9 So ^eyou shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord.