A moment in scripture
Deuteronomy 20:17
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:
The surrounding passage
- Deuteronomy 20:15
Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
- Deuteronomy 20:16
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:
- Deuteronomy 20:18
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.
- Deuteronomy 20:19
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:
Scripture: King James Version (KJV), English, 66-book canon. The quotation retains the wording and numbering of our source corpus.