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The Eighth Commandment: Statutes and Precepts (33)
Deuteronomy 20.10-18
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.”
If possible, diplomacy should go ahead of war, to avoid conflict with neighboring peoples. If peace can be achieved without strife, then those who would otherwise have been the objects of hostilities were to be reduced to slavery. In Israel under the Law of God, slavery was much to be preferred to death, and slavery in Israel to slavery anywhere else.
It’s again difficult for us to understand how the Law of God, given to promote love of neighbors, can sanction such violence as we read about in this statute. But this is a function of our historical perspective. The peoples against which Israel entered into warfare were not forgiving toward those they vanquished (cf. Deut. 2.12, 20-23). Those whom they defeated, they utterly destroyed. Any nation that would not submit to Israel and become slaves would certainly rise again, at some point, to wreak havoc against the people of God. This was to be avoided as much as possible by putting all vanquished males to the sword. All their goods could be plundered, but none must be left alive to corrupt or destroy the people of Israel.
In our day the Spirit of God is able to change the hearts of people, and we wait on Him, as we turn the other cheek to our enemies, in the hope that we might make of our enemies – and His – friends and brothers, just as He has done with us. One application of this statute to our day would seem to be that the Church should spare no expense in order to proclaim the Gospel to the lost and to plead with and bear with them so that they might be saved.
T. M. Moore
The Law of God is the soil which, fertilized by the rest of God’s Word and watered by His Spirit, brings forth the fruit of Christian life. If you’d like to understand this process better, and how to make best use of the Law in your walk with and work for the Lord, order the book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, from our online store.
Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.