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Warare and Wanton Destruction:

A Reexamination o Deuteronomy

20:19–20 in Relation to

Ancient Siegecraf

jacob l. [email protected]

Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322

To Michael Walzer,with admiration

In January 1865, Henry Halleck, chief of staff in Washington, D.C., wrote toMaj. Gen. William T. Sherman in Savannah, Georgia: “Should you capture

Charleston, I hope by some accident the place may be destroyed, and if a little saltshould be sown upon its site it may prevent the growth of future crops of nullifica-tion and secession.” In response Sherman wrote: “I will bear in mind your hint asto Charleston but don’t think salt will be necessary. [. . .] The truth is the wholearmy is burning with insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina.I almost tremble at her fate.”1

The horrific devastation of a city and its surrounding territory planned in thisCivil War correspondence is an atrocity common to the history of warfare. For ethi-cists and jurists, these strategies of urbicide (wiping out a city’s architectural memory) and ecocide (ravaging an environment) concern ius in bello,2 and by

This article is based on a lecture at Emory University on November 13, 2006, and was pro-duced in the process of writing my forthcoming book,War and the Formation of Society in Ancient

Israel (Oxford University Press).1 See E. Milby Burton, The Siege of Charleston 1861–1865 (Columbia: University of South

Carolina Press, 1970), 312–13.2 For the term “urbicide,” see Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War

JBL 127, no. 3 (2008): 423–458

This article was published in JBL 127/3 (2008) 423–58, copyright © 2008 by the Society of Biblical Literature. To purchase

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423



proscribing the destruction of fruit trees in siege situations, Deut 20:19–20 hasmade a historic contribution to this area of Just War theory and Laws of ArmedConflict (LOAC). In what follows I examine the Deuteronomic prohibition in thesetting of ancient siege warfare. In particular I challenge some current interpreta-tions according to which the law constitutes a polemic against, or subversion of,foreign imperial ideology. After situating the practice forbidden by Deuteronomy in the larger context of military tactics in ancient Western Asia and the easternMediterranean, I attempt to show that the law emerged from an intrasocietal dis-course on acceptable military conduct rather than an intersocietal response to thewarfare of other nations. We begin by looking briefly at the reception of the law inmodern jurisprudence.

I. Hugo Grotius, and Neo-Assyrian Siege Techniques

More than two hundred years before the American Civil War, the Dutch jurist,philosopher, dramatist, poet, and Christian apologist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645)published De iure belli ac pacis, a three-volume treatise that stands as a formidablemonument in the history of international law.3 One particularly influential chap-ter of this work exhorts military leaders to display Temperamentum circa vasta-tionem et similia.4 Appealing to the universal authority of ius naturae,5 its pagesquote a wide range of Greco-Roman authors, demonstrating the frequency withwhich they condemn the wanton destruction of lands and cities. But it also drawsheavily on Jewish authors such as Philo and Josephus, as well as medieval com-mentators, who censure the gratuitous wasting of property.6 For Grotius, the views

(London: Reaktion, 2007), and for “ecocide,” see Aaron Schwabach, “Ecocide and Genocide inIraq: International Law, the Marsh Arabs and Environmental Damage in Non-International Con-flicts,” Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law & Policy 15 (2003/2004): 1–38.

3 Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, Edited and with an Introduction by Richard Tuck: From the Edition by Jean Barbeyrac (3 vols.; Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005; first pub-lished in 1625). Many legal historians regard this Dutch thinker as the most important figure inthe history of international law; see, e.g., Hersh [Hersch] Lauterpacht, “The Grotian Tradition inInternational Law,” British Year Book of International Law 23 (1946): 1–53. For an overview of Grotian scholarship since Lauterpacht, see Renée Jeffery, “Hersch Lauterpacht, the Realist Chal-lenge and ‘Grotian Tradition’ in 20th-Century International Relations,” European Journal of Inter-national Relations 12 (2006): 223–50.

4 “Concerning Moderation in regard to the spoiling the Country of our Enemies, and suchother Things,” the title of ch. 12, book 3.

5 For Grotius, ius humanum consisted of ius naturae, ius civile, and ius gentium (naturale, vol-

untarium); see Rights of War and Peace, 1:150–62, as well as N. Konegen, “Zum Staatsverständnis von Hugo Grotius,” Institut für Staatswissenschaften 7 (1998): 6–30; and Knud Haakonssen, “HugoGrotius and the History of Political Thought,” Political Theory 13 (1985): 239–65.

6 Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, 3:1459–62. Grotius maintained a lively correspondence

424 Journal of Biblical Literature 127, no. 3 (2008)






of this group are imbued with greater authority since they descend directly from“the Law” (i.e., the Torah). The specific biblical passage to which these writersappeal is the Deuteronomic prohibition of destroying fruit trees when one besiegesa city, known in Jewish tradition as tyx#t lb/)l:

When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order tocapture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human towithdraw before you into the besieged city? Only trees that you know do notyield food may be destroyed; you may cut them down for constructing siege-works against the city that is waging war on you, until it has been reduced. (Deut20:19–20 according to TNK)

On the basis of this scriptural text Grotius admonishes his readers:

For if the Creator and supreme LORD of Mankind did not approve, that theIsraelites should lay waste without Necessity the Lands of the People, againstwhom he had armed them in an extraordinary Manner, and had made them asit were the Executors of his terrible Judgments; much more would he not approveour doing so in ordinary Wars, often unjust, and undertaken without muchNecessity, and wherein the Party who boasts the most of the Justice of his Cause,is sometimes in the wrong.7

The principles of “proportionality” and “necessity” that Grotius elaborates here, aswell as the norms defended throughout the chapter, had a deep impact on Just Wartheory as well as LOAC that proscribe the ruination of civilian infrastructures.8 Inorder to measure their influence, one can compare Grotius’s arguments to the word-ing of the Geneva and Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles, or the UnitedNations Charter.9 On November 5, 2006, the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal con-

victed Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity on the basis of a special statuteinformed by these and other international conventions.10 One of the five chargesbrought against Hussein was significantly the destruction in Dujail of 250,000 acresof fruit trees—precisely the sort of vegetation that the biblical law sought to protect.

with Menasseh ben Israel, and, although often struggling and confused, he read with lively inter-est medieval Jewish commentators in Hebrew. See Phyllis S. Lachs, “Hugo Grotius’ Use of JewishSources in On the Law of War and Peace,” Renaissance Quarterly 30 (1977): 181–200.

7 Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, 3:1459 (italics in original).8 It was primarily through Grotius that Deut 20:19–20 had its significant impact on mod-

ern jurists. De Indis de jure belli by Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) refers often to Deuteronomy 20, but never to vv. 19–20.

9 Other chapters also had an impact on these conventions. See Peter Haggenmacher, Grotius

et la doctrine de la guerre juste (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1983).10 These include the Iraqi Law Number 7 of 1958, the Iraqi Criminal Code Number 111 of

1969, Iraqi Law Number 10 of 2005, the Statute of the Iraqi Special Tribunal from 2003, as wellas articles 6–8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Wright: Warfare and Wanton Destruction 425






By way of De iure belli ac pacis one can thus trace a line of continuity from con-temporary international jurisprudence to the Deuteronomic prohibition.11

With respect to this law in Deuteronomy, many scholars claim that the authorsof the code framed the law as a direct response to Neo-Assyrian military tactics.The view is not new. Supporting the opinion of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), August Dillmann wrote in 1886 that the war laws in Deuteronomy 20 aimto hinder “the wild barbarism and brutality with which many ancient peoples, espe-cially the Assyrians, fought wars,” and to affirm the “the higher moral spirit of Yahwism, namely, the basic principles of leniency and clemency.”12 In recent yearsthis view has won more adherents.13 Thus Eckart Otto avers with respect to vv. 19–20: “One could not formulate a more explicit protest against Assyrian warfare,

11 It is important to note that the censure of wanton destruction has a long tradition in Iraq.

The official gazette of Iraq, Al-Wāq’āi‘ al-‘Irāqiīya, in which the Statute of Iraqi Special Tribunalfrom 2003 was published, has on its front cover an image of Hammurabi’s Laws, which in §59.4–9specifies heavy punishments for the destruction of property—in particular fruit trees (date palms).In addition to earlier witnesses to this legal tradition (see, e.g., Jerrold S. Cooper, Sumerian and

Akkadian Royal Inscriptions, vol. 1, Presargonic Inscriptions [New Haven: American Oriental Soci-ety, 1986] 71–72, cols. v and x), the Qur’an enjoins Muslims to abstain from harming trees in a jihad; see M. I. H. Farooqi, Plants of the Quran (Lucknwo: Sidrah, 1992), 25; Al-Hafiz B. A. Masri,“Islam and Ecology,” in Islam and Ecology (ed. Fazlum Khalid and Joanne O’Brien; New York:Cassel, 1992), 13. Some Muslim armies were accompanied by a special officer whose dutiesincluded ensuring that the soldiers abstained from burning trees. In modern Iraq, orchards(owned most often by the local elite) surround cities and villages, and the situation does not seemto have been much different in ancient Babylonia. I thank Nili Wazana for the inspiration toresearch Hussein’s trial in this context.

12 August Dillmann, Numeri, Deuteronomium und Josua (2nd ed.; EHAT; Leipzig: S. Hirzel,

1886), 334–35 (my translation of “. . . wilde Rohheit u. Grausamkeit, mit welcher von manchenalten Völkern, zumal den Assyrern, die Kriege geführt wurden” and “den höheren sittlichen Geistdes Jahvethums, nam. die Grundsätze der Milde u. Schonung”). Unfortunately I could not locatethe passage from Eichhorn to which Dillmann refers.

13 See, inter alia, George Adam Smith, The Book of Deuteronomy (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1918), 249; Walther Eichrodt, Theologie des Alten Testaments (Leipzig: Hinrichs,1933), 64; Gottfried Seitz, Redaktionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Deuteronomium (BWANT 13;Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971), 159; Horst Dietrich Preuss, Deuteronomium (EdF 164; Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982), 120; Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Deuteronomy” in The

Jerome Biblical Commentary (ed. Raymond E. Brown et al.; London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1968),101–22, here 114; Mark W. Hamilton, “The Past as Destiny: Historical Visions in Sam 'al and Judahunder Assyrian Hegemony,” HTR 91 (1998): 215–50, here 237; and Jeffrey Stackert, “Rewriting theTorah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation” (Ph.D. diss., BrandeisUniversity, 2006), 175–79, 185. Many appeal to both Assyrian and biblical sources; see, e.g.,Samuel R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (3rd ed.; ICC; Edin-

burgh: T&T Clark, 1951), 236; Karl Krämer, Numeri und Deuteronomium (Heilige Schrift für dasLeben II/1; Freiburg: Herder, 1955); Fritz Stolz, Jahwes und Israels Kriege (ATANT 60; Zurich:Theologischer Verlag, 1972), 27–28; and Israel Eph‘al, “The Assyrian Ramp at Lachish: Military and Lexical Aspects” (in Hebrew), Zion 49 (1984): 343 n. 28.







which is reflected in their royal inscriptions and palace reliefs.”14 In a finely nuancedessay, Nili Wazana argues similarly to Otto, treating this law as a polemic retortthat “sheds light on the way subjugated peoples countered ideological pressure dur-ing their contacts with the world’s first empire.”15 Parallels between the law andAssyrian sources have even been cited as external evidence for dating the compo-sition of Deuteronomy, and this in turn prompted a book-length response by Michael G. Hasel.16

Now if it is warranted to claim that the Deuteronomic law originated as aprotest against Neo-Assyrian imperial ideology, and if the law, by way of Grotius’sinfluential treatise, directly informs our modern war conventions that condemnwanton destruction, then the line of continuity traced above would extend fromthese conventions back to anti-Assyrian imperial polemics!

Although this bold thesis may have a certain appeal in a scholarly context gov-

erned by postcolonial discourse, it proves upon closer inspection to be untenable.The weak link in the chain of reception history is not the one that connects Deuter-onomy 20 to Grotius or Grotius to modern war conventions, but rather the attemptto interpret the ancient law as a polemic against “the empire.” In what follows Iendeavor to demonstrate that this approach fails to account adequately for boththe Deuteronomic text and the Neo-Assyrian sources. I begin by treating theDeuteronomic law in the broader context of ancient military practices.

II. Intentional and Incidental Destruction in War

For both ancient and modern warfare, one can distinguish two general waysof jeopardizing civilian infrastructures, or to use a more felicitous term, Life Sup-

14 “Deutlicher kann man seinen Protest gegen assyrische Kriegspraxis, die sich in neu-assyrischen Königsinschriften und Palastreliefs niedergeschlagen hat, nicht zum Ausdruck bringen.” See Eckart Otto, Krieg und Frieden in der Hebräischen Bible und im Alten Orient (Theologie und Frieden 18; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1999), 100.

15 Nili Wazana, “Are the Trees of the Field Human? A Biblical War Law (Deut. 20:19–20) andNeo-Assyrian Propaganda,” in Treasures on Camels’ Humps: Historical and Literary Studies fromthe Ancient Near East Presented to Israel Eph‘al (ed. Mordechai Cogan and Dan'el Kahn; Jerusalem:Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2008), 275–95, here 295.

16 Michael G. Hasel, Military Practice and Polemic: Israel’s Laws of Warfare in Near EasternPerspective (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2005). Hasel’s argument is based onwhat I regard as a misunderstanding, namely, that the authors of Deut 20:19–20 were primarily opposed to the use of fruit trees to build siege works. Hasel finds evidence of this practice in one

text (the account of the siege of Megiddo by Thutmosis III) and concludes that the law representsa polemic against military practices from the mid-second millennium. I have reviewed his argu-ment elsewhere (see RBL [http://www.bookreviews.org ] and JBL 124 [2005]: 755–58) and thuswill not focus on it here.







port Systems (LSS).17 The first is incidental or unintentional destruction.18 Inancient western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, populations were especially hard hit from this side of military conflicts. During lengthy periods of armed con-flict, farmers could not attend to the daily chores of plowing and planting, nursingthe vineyards and olive orchards, or repairing terraces that facilitate agriculture inhilly terrain.19 This is a case of winning the battle yet losing the war insofar as thepopulation, prohibited from duties of husbandry, faced severe economic depres-sion, if not famine, long after the enemy had desisted from its assault.

An illustration of this phenomenon is provided by the corpus of seventy-oneletters from Rib-Adda that were found among the Amarna archives (fourteenthcentury b.c.e.).20 In one of the letters from this corpus, Rib-Adda writes to the kingof Egypt complaining that he was beleaguered, trapped in his city of Byblos “like abird in a cage” (EA 79, 90 et al.). Because of the enemy at his doorstep, planting

was impossible: “For lack of cultivation my field is like a woman without a hus-band” (EA 74, 75, 81).21 This in turn had catastrophic consequences. Rib-Adda’speople had sold not only their household objects but also their children for provi-sions (ibid.). The escalation of hostilities made fieldwork impossible, and the threatof starvation during the winter led to a depopulation of the region. Even if theinhabitants of Byblos could hold out against their besiegers, famine was inevitableand would continue to inflict losses for many months after the siege had beenlifted.22

17 LSS are “any natural or human-engineered system that furthers the life of the biospherein a sustainable fashion. The fundamental attribute of LSS is that together they provide all of thesustainable needs required for continuance of life” (The Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems[EOLSS], Developed under the Auspices of UNESCO [Oxford: EOLSS Publishers, http://

www.eolss.net]; see “Definition of EOLSS”). Although not referring to the EOLSS, Hasel occa-sionally uses this term in Military Practice.18 This category includes “collateral damage,” a euphemism used since the Vietnam War for

tangential harm caused to civilians and their property; see USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide (AirForce Pamphlet 14-210: Intelligence, 1998), 179–80.

19 For ancient Israelite agricultural practices, see Oded Borowski, Agriculture in Iron AgeIsrael (Boston: ASOR, 2002); and D. C. Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in theEarly Iron Age (SWBA 3; Sheffield: Almond, 1985).

20 See Mario Liverani, “Rib-Adda, Righteous Sufferer,” in Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography (ed. Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van de Mieroop; London: Equinox, 2004;orig. publ. in 1974), 97–124; and W. L. Moran, “Rib-Hadda: Job at Byblos?” in Biblical and Related Studies Presented to Samuel Iwry (ed. Ann Kort and Scott N. Morschauser; Winona Lake, IN:Eisenbrauns, 1985), 173–81.

21 This line is widely assumed to reformulate a proverb: “A woman without a husband is likea field without a farmer.”

22 As William L. Moran observes for the Amarna letters, “Interference in the basis of agrar-ian life, flocks and fields, seems to belong to the topos of ‘under siege’” (The Amarna Letters [Bal-timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987], 298). One could argue that this is a case of anenemy army intentionally interfering with LSS. The besieging army accordingly meant only to







A more obscure, yet nevertheless important, example of incidental destructionof LSS is locust plagues. During a time of extended military conflict, fields cannotbe plowed. In western Asia this situation allows grasshopper egg pods, depositedby the female in the topsoil, to survive and reach maturity. As a consequence, thereis a high chance that the region will face a locust plague in the following year. Suchwas the case, for example, in Afghanistan after the war in 2002. For ancient west-ern Asia, locust plagues after lengthy periods of war are evidenced by various let-ters.23 In them we hear of local rulers declaring that their subjects were on the vergeof deserting the region because of locust plagues or of soldiers working in specialpest management task forces assigned to treat the pests.24

LSS were imperiled not only inadvertently but also when armies consciously selected them as the targets of their aggression. Examples of such wanton destruc-tion are depicted throughout the Bible. In Judg 9:45 Abimelech quells a revolt in

Shechem by razing the city and sowing it with salt. As with regard to Charleston inthe letters quoted above, these ecocidal and urbicidal measures were intended tohave both a strategic and a symbolic impact.25 An act that corresponds to thedestruction of water utilities by modern armies is reported in 2 Kgs 3:19, 25, wherethe Israelite coalition stops up the wells of the Moabites (see also Gen 26:15, 18).Direct assaults on agricultural subsistence are depicted at least twice in the book of Judges. Every time the Israelites had finished sowing, the Midianites would comeup against them to ravage their produce and livestock (Judg 6:3–5). 26 Similarly,

weaken the power base of the local ruler by prohibiting agricultural activities. Polyaenus 4.6.20provides an analogy. This motivation for the siege of Byblos cannot be ruled out, and we mustassume that the aggressor did whatever it took to get the job done. But from other letters it seems

that the besieging army aimed to conquer the city as quickly as possible and was not always awareof—or at least not satisfied with—the economic effects of the armed conflict.23 See Karen Radner, “Fressen und gefressen werden: Heuschrecken im Alten Orient,” WO

34 (2004): 7–22.24 The book of Joel contains prophecies of an impending war that seem to describe various

developmental stages of locusts. See, e.g., John A. Thomson, “Joel’s Locusts in the Light of NearEastern Parallels,” JNES 14 (1955): 52–55.

25 Sowing a land with salt-cress or salt was a common punitive measure in ancient westernAsia; see, e.g., Sefire I, A, 35–36 ( ANET, 660a); A. K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Sec-ond Millennia BC (to 1115 BC) (RIMA 1; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 183, II. 47–53 (Shalmaneser I); A. K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC (2 vols.; RIMA2, 3; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), Prisma 87.1: V:99–VI:22 (Tiglath-pileser I); and Maximilian Streck, Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige bis zum Untergang Nineveh’s(Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916), 50–58 v 126–vi 103; all the latter examples use zarû (“sow”). See alsoStanley Gevirtz, “Jericho and Shechem: A Religio-Literary Aspect of City Destruction,” VT 13

(1963): 52–62; and Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Claren-don, 1972), 109–11.

26 The tactic of demoralizing one’s enemies by repeatedly allowing them to plant and thendestroying the fields is mentioned also by Frontinus 3.3.1.







Samson catches three hundred foxes, ties torches to their tails, and sets them freeto burn the Philistines’ grain, vineyards, and olive groves (15:4–5). While these sto-ries may not be historically reliable, they demonstrate that their authors were wellaware of the tactical potential of LSS destruction.

A closer analogy to the law in Deuteronomy is found in another letter fromRib-Adda to the Egyptian court (EA 91). Here the Phoenician ruler reports thathis enemy had vanquished all his cities and was striving now to take Byblos. Whilewaiting for the city either to capitulate or deliver a large sum of silver and gold as apayoff for terminating the siege, he plundered the city’s grain and began to cutdown its orchards.27

Deuteronomy 20:19–20 bans the kind of warfare that seems to have beenwaged against Byblos insofar as it forbids Israelite armies to destroy fruit trees whenthe city they are besieging has not surrendered after an extended period of time.

The law envisions a situation of a protracted siege: “If you besiege a city for many days (Mybr Mymy) . . . .”28 Moreover, it refers to gradual tree destruction that occursbefore the city capitulates. Taken strictly, the law does not refer to conduct after asiege has been lifted (see v. 20b). Finally, it presupposes that the Israelite armieswould be inclined to cut down orchards when besieging a city.

In order to understand why an Israelite army or Rib-Adda’s antagonist wouldhave felled fruit trees when investing a city, we must take a brief glance at the reper-toire of ancient siege tactics.

III. The Indirect Approach

Before the advent of heavy artillery and explosives, most armies of the first

millennium b.c.e. lacked the logistical and tactical expertise required to breachfortifications.29 Because one could not always rely on the efficacy of sonic warfare,

27 The condition of the tablet does not permit certainty. See J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1915), 430–31; as well as R. F. Youngblood, “The Amarna Corre-spondence of Rib-Haddi, Prince of Byblos” (Ph.D. diss., Dropsie College, 1961), 351–54.William L. Moran suggests that am-ma-qú-ut may have been contaminated by ammaššah ~ in line16 (The Amarna Letters [Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992], 165). Anson F. Rainey has confirmed Knudtzon’s reading of line 14, translating it accordingly: “My orchards [and] my [field]s were cut down” (private correspondence from March 19, 2007, based on transcriptionmade on September 22, 2003).

28 The protasis is formulated as expected for a situation before the city has been taken; see,e.g., 1 Kgs 20:1 (hb Mxlyw Nwrm# l( rcyw).

29 The biblical record does recount several cases in which the Israelite armies captured citiesby direct assault. The most explicit example is 2 Sam 20:15 (hmwxh lyphl Mytyx#m). This conventional siege warfare consisted of sapping (undermining), ramming, scaling, and tunneling,







as in the battle of Jericho,30 it was necessary to devise poliorcetic methods withwhich an aggressor could either penetrate the city by subterfuge or entice its inhab-itants to come forth.31 Modern military science refers to this type of warfare as “theindirect approach.”32 Although large professional armies such as that of the Assyr-ians did employ this method, they also had the option of frontal assault, whichinvolved most often the construction of time-consuming siege ramps.33 This con-trasts starkly with Assyria’s weaker competitors in the southern Levant. Becausetheir armies consisted of mostly conscripted soldiers serving short duties, they relied more heavily on alternatives to frontal assaults.

When beginning a siege, one usually attempted to reason with the city. Thusthe eighth-century b.c.e. Nubian ruler Piye offered his foes an alternative: “‘Look,two ways are before you; choose as you wish. Open [your gates], you live; close,you die. My majesty will not pass by a closed town!’ Then they opened immediately.

which in the first millennium were practiced most effectively by the Assyrians; see the exemplary work of Israel Eph‘al, Siege and Its Ancient Near Eastern Manifestations (in Hebrew; Jerusalem:Magnes, 1996), as well as Erika Bleibtreu, “Five Ways to Conquer a City,” BARev 17 (May/June1991): 52–61, 75; A. Mierzejewski, “La technique de siège assyrienne aux IX-VII siècles avantnotre ère,” Etudes et Travaux 7 (1973): 11–20; Walter Mayer, Politik und Kriegskunst der Assyrer (ALASP 9; Münster: Ugarit, 1995), 470–74.

30 Although the term is used here tongue-in-cheek, sonic and ultrasonic warfare (USW),which employs sound-pressure and -power, represents a heavily researched area in modern mil-itary technology and is already employed by many armies in both their lethal and nonlethal arse-nals. Additional biblical examples are found in Judg 7:18–22; 2 Chr 13:15; 20:21–23.

31 The book of Proverbs refers several times to battle tactics (see 11:14; 20:18; 21:22; 24:6;as well Jer 49:20, 30), and military officers in ancient Israel would likely have undergone formaltraining in siegecraft. See Abraham Malamat, “Israelite Conduct of War in the Conquest of Canaan,” in Symposia Celebrating the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the AmericanSchools of Oriental Research (1900–1975) (ed. Frank Moore Cross; Zion Research FoundationOccasional Publications; Cambridge, MA: ASOR 1979), 35–55, here 44–45. Because military knowledge is famously well transmitted through time and space, the Strategemataof Frontinus andPolyaenus may provide insights into siege tactics employed earlier in western Asia. See Eph‘al,Siege; as well as idem, “Ways and Means to Conquer a City,” in Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th

Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995(ed. Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1997), 49–53.Eph‘al refers to I. Starr, Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria (SAA 4;Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1990), which provides catalogues of stratagems.

32 The concept was introduced by Basil Liddell Hart after World War I; see The DecisiveWars of History (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1929). Malamat draws on this concept for a quite dif-ferent purpose: to explain the success of the Israelite armies in the conquest of Canaan (“IsraeliteConduct of War, 44–47; see also idem, “How Inferior Israelite Forces Conquered Fortified Canaan-

ite Cities,” BARev 8 [1982]: 24–35).33 For an illustrative example, see Israel Eph‘al, “The Assyrian Siege Ramp at Lachish: Military and Lexical Aspects,”Tel Aviv 11 (1984): 60–70.







His majesty entered the town” (line 82).34 Significantly, Deuteronomy 20 com-mands Israel to begin a siege with an offer of peace.35

When a city spurned the offer, it often paid a dear price when it was finally conquered. Thus, 2 Kgs 15:16 reports that Menahem attacked the region sur-rounding Tiphsah (or Tappuah) and “ripped open all its pregnant women” becauseit did not “open” to him. The harsh treatment epitomized by this expression wouldhave served to encourage other cities to choose the path of peace, rendering futuresieges unnecessary.36 This tactic of psychological warfare seems to have beenemployed widely.37

A favorite siege tactic in war legends is the ruse. In addition to the popular taleof the Trojan horse,38 an older and less familiar Egyptian account tells how Thoth,a general of Thut-mose III, captured Joppa by hiding armed warriors in two hun-dred large baskets that another three hundred soldiers carried into the Canaanite

city, claiming they contained gifts for the governor.39

While we cannot be sure whatis intended, ruses are also mentioned often in the “Queries” from SargonidAssyria.40 Schemes and ambuscades are also popular motifs in biblical siege stories.Battles involving feigned retreats, decoys, diversionary maneuvers and “liers inwait” (Mybr)) are depicted in the conquest stories of Ai (Joshua 8), Shechem (Judg

34 Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings (3 vols.; 2nd ed.;Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 3:74. See Pnina Galpaz-Feller, “The Victory Stelaof King Piye: The Biblical Perspective on War and Peace,” RB 100 (1993): 399–414. His words may be compared to Jer 38:17–18 (see A. Niccacci, “Egitto e Bibbia: Sulla base della stele di Piankhi,”LASBF 32 [1982]: 7–58, here 28); Deut 20:11; 30:15–20; 2 Kgs 18:19–35/Isa 36:4–20. That theAssyrians also negotiated with cities is well documented: In addition to 2 Kings 18, the omen lit-erature refers often to the possibility of taking a city through “kind words” and peaceful negotia-

tions. See Starr, Queries, texts 30, 43, 44, 101, 209, 267 as well as Eph‘al, Siege, 27. See also A. L.Oppenheim, “‘Siege-Documents’ from Nippur,” Iraq 17 (1955): 69–89; Grant Frame, “A Siege Doc-ument from Babylon Dating to 649 B.C.,” JCS 51 (1999): 101–6.

35 An alternative to offers of peace as means for enticing the enemy out onto the battlefieldis vilification; see 1 Kgs 20:9–12 and (generally in battle) J. J. Glück, “Reviling and Monomachy as Battle-Preludes in Ancient Warfare,” Acta Classica 7 (1964): 25–31; and W. Kendrick Pritchett,The Greek State at War (5 vols.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 2:153–55; Starr,Queries, texts 29, 43, 44, 102.

36 For the possibility that the expression is a hyperbolic trope, see Mordechai Cogan, “‘Rip-ping Open Pregnant Women’ in Light of an Assyrian Analogue,” JAOS 103 (1983): 755–57; andNadav Na’aman, “The Deuteronomist and Voluntary Servitude to Foreign Powers,” JSOT 65(1995): 37–53.

37 See the classic statements by H. W. F. Saggs, “Assyrian Warfare in the Sargonid Period,”Iraq 25 (1963): 149–50, as well as the discussion below.

38 See the Ἰλίου πέρσις and Odyssey 8.487–520.

39 For the story of Thoth, see ANET, 22b–23b. Hans Goedicke shows the connectionsbetween this trick, reminiscent of Ali Baba, and the tale of the Trojan horse (“The Capture of Joppa,” ChrEg 43 [1968]: 219–21).

40 See Starr, Queries, texts for nikiltu in the glossary.







9:25, 30–45), Gibeah (Judg 20:29–48), the city of the Amalekites (1 Sam 15:5), andSamaria (2 Kgs 7:12). In the story of the conquest of Bethel (Judg 1:24–25), spiesfrom the tribe of Joseph make a pact with an informant in order to learn of a secretingress into the city.41 Although not mentioning any treachery, the legend of David’sconquest of Jerusalem seems to allude to the penetration of the city via its watershaft (2 Sam 5:8).

A water source was not just a vulnerable point of entry; it could also beblocked in order to force a city’s residents to surrender. In preparation for theonslaught of the enemy, Nahum enjoins the Ninevites not only to strengthen theirforts but also to “draw water for the siege” (3:14). Without a source from whichthey could be replenished, reservoirs were ultimately insufficient. Thus, the Rab-shakeh, standing next to one of Jerusalem’s water sources, refers to the people sit-ting on the wall as those who are doomed “to drink their own urine” (2 Kgs 18:27).

The tactic of cutting off the municipal water supply was, however, not alwayspracticable, since wartime experiences could be counted on to make an impact onurban planning. Hezekiah is said to have created a conduit to direct the waters of the Gihon into Jerusalem (2 Kgs 20:20; 2 Chr 32:30; see also Isa 22:9–11), presum-ably in preparation for Sennacherib’s campaign. Many Iron Age IIa cities in theLevant invested their resources in ensuring that the municipal water sources werelocated within the city walls or at least well protected, making feats like that of David’s army ideal material for the heroic tradition.42 The strategic defense of waterworks stimulated the creativity of tacticians. Thessalos (fifth century b.c.e.)reports that in the “First Sacred War” (595–585 b.c.e.), the amphictyons discov-ered the water pipe leading into the city after it was broken by a horse hoof. Anasclepiad named Nebros advised the leaders of the alliance to poison the water withhellebore roots. The advice was heeded, and the defenders of the city, who had

imbibed the infected water and were seized with obstinate diarrhea, deserted theirposts.43

Most armies, however, were not as lucky as the Amphictyonic League. Whenbesieging a city, they thus concentrated their attention on other aspects of a city’s

41 This story of a loyal insider resembles the Rahab account in Joshua 2 and 7.42 See Ronny Reich, “The Excavations at the Gihon Spring and Warren’s Shaft System in

the City of David,” in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed (2nd ed.; ed. Hillel Geva; Jerusalem: Israel Explo-ration Society, 2000), 327–39; Norma Franklin, “Relative and Absolute Chronology of Gallery 629 and the Megiddo Water System: A Reassessment,” in Megiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons(ed. Israel Finkelstein et al.; 2 vols.; Monograph Series 18; Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, 2000),2:515–23; Ronny Reich, “Notes on the Gezer Water System,” PEQ 135 (2003): 22–29; ShlomoBunimovitz, “The Final Destruction of Beth Shemesh and the ‘pax Assyriaca’ in the Jordan She-phelah,” TA30 (2003): 3–26; and finally Zecharia Kallai, “Note on J. A. Emerton: Lines 25–6 of the

Moabite Stone and a Recently-Discovered Inscription,” VT 56 (2006): 552–53.43 See also Pausanias (Descr. 10.37.5), Frontinus (Str. 3.2.11) and Polyaenus (Str. I), as well

as the discussion in A. Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (Woodstock: Duckworth, 2003), 100–101.







LSS, such as the fields and grain reserves. The aforementioned Rib-Adda corre-spondence from the Amarna archives describes repeatedly how the enemy hadrobbed the grain of Byblos in an attempt to force its surrender (see esp. EA 85).44

This tactic too was not always feasible: granaries could be situated within themunicipal fortifications, and, because of logistical problems, sieges were difficult toconduct during the harvest season.45 One therefore turned to the most vulnerabletarget of a city: its fruit trees.

IV. Destruction of Fruit Trees in Siege Warfare

Fruit trees represented a precious component of LSS in ancient western Asiaand the Mediterranean world.46 Not only do they require many years to mature,but they also demand persistent care if they are ever to yield a profitable harvest. A

female date palm, for example, does not reach maturity until fourteen to thirty-five years of age, and it can bear its calorie-rich, easily preservable fruit for morethan a century.47 Olive trees, which can live considerably longer than date palms,48

need seven years to bear edible fruit and reach maturity after fifteen to twenty years.

In contrast, grapevines require only two years to reach maturity. This shorter timespan and their relative lack of nutrients rendered them less valuable and thus lessa target of aggression in times of a protracted siege, which may explain why they are not mentioned in our law from Deuteronomy.49 The felling of two grown olivetrees meant the permanent loss of 1.5 to 2.2 kilograms of olive oil per year,and this

44 Since arable soil was also valuable, it too became a target of hostility. One could causelasting damage to it by sowing salt or salt-cress. This punitive measure seems, however, to have

been a ritual action performed primarily against inhabited municipal areas and after conquests,not during a siege. See the literature cited in n. 24 above.45 Because soldiers had to tend their own crops, sieges during the harvest season were rare

and confined by and large to professional armies. Eph‘al discusses fortuitous times for sieges; seeSiege, 61–63.

46 The role of fruit trees in ancient LSS is easiest to assess by a perusal of the various Baby-lonian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Hittite law collections, which treat fruit trees as the most valu-able property.

47 See W. H. Barreveld, Date Palm Products (FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 101; Foodand Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Rome, 1993). Because of the time they requireto reach maturity, date palms belonged to the most valuable property in southern Mesopotamia.The penalty for harming a neighbor’s date palm was one mina of silver or a male boy; see, e.g.,Georges Contenau, Contrats Néo-Babyloniens I: De Téglath-phalasar III à Nabonide (Musée duLouvre, Textes Cunéiformes 12; Paris: Geuthner, 1927), 89.

48 An olive tree in Bar, Montenegro, is over two thousand years old, and one-thousand-

year-old trees throughout the Mediterranean are not unusual.49 Halakic tradition, however,requires that one allow a vine to mature for four years before

harvesting its grapes. As prestige objects, vineyards were nevertheless targets of enemy aggression(see, e.g., Judg 15:4–5; Jer 12:10; Joel 1).







oil, in contrast to wine, represents a critical component of the diet in western Asiaand Mediterranean lands.50 Equally high in caloric value are figs, producing fifteenmillion kilocalories per hectare, as compared to 1.3 to 2 million for wheat or wheatpolycropped with olives.51 Fruit orchards and gardens were also prestige objectsand symbols of dominion. In Babylonia the date palm was known as “the tree of wealth.”52 Qohelet boasts of his gardens and parks (Mysdrpw twng), in which heplanted all kinds of fruit trees (yrp lk C( [2:5]). Although a late text, it accurately mirrors the role of gardens in displays of power and wealth.53 Finally, gardens andorchards often belonged to temples and cultic complexes,54 or were themselves cul-tic places.55

For these reasons, fruit trees were prime strategic targets in siege situations.Whereas interference with the water supply and the robbing of grain guaranteedsurrender through the immediate physical effect of dehydration and starvation, the

practice of gradual fruit tree destruction, as described in Deut 20:19–20 and EA91, had enduring consequences and was thus more psychological in nature. The

50 See F. R. Riley, “Olive Oil Production on Bronze Age Crete: Nutritional Properties, Pro-cessing Methods, and Storage Life of Minoan Olive Oil,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21 (2002):63–75; as well as the articles in History and Technology of Olive Oil in the Holy Land (ed. EtanAyalon; Arlington, VA: Oléarius, 1994) and Olive Oil in Antiquity: Israel and Neighboring Coun-tries from Neolith to Early Arab Period (ed. Michael Heltzer and David Eitam; Haifa: University of Haifa, 1987).

51 Figs were also the most important wartime food in Attica; see Lin Foxhall, “Farm andFighting in Ancient Greece,” in War and Society in the Greek World (ed. John Rich and GrahamShipley; London: Routledge, 1993), 134–45, here 141.

52 See, e.g., Wilfred G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959),

74:56. The best example in the Bible for gardens, vineyards, and orchards as prestige objects is1 Kings 21. On the Garden of Uzza and the King’s Garden, see F. Stavrakopoulou, “Exploring theGarden of Uzza: Death, Burial and Ideologies of Kingship,” Bib 87 (2006): 1–21.

53 A discussion of the evidence cannot be provided here. See Terje Stordalen, Echoes of Eden:Genesis 2–3 and Symbolism of the Eden Garden in Biblical Hebrew Literature (CBET 25; Leuven:Peeters, 2000); Lawrence E. Stager, “Jerusalem and the Garden of Eden,” ErIsr 26 (1999): 183–94;R. Bichler and R. Röllinger, “Die Hängenden Gärten zu Ninive: Die Lösung eines Rätsels?” in VonSumer bis Homer: Festschrift für Manfred Schretter zum 60. Geburtstag am 25. Februar 2004 (ed.Robert Röllinger; AOAT 325; Münster: Ugarit, 2005), 153–218; Stephanie Dalley, “The HangingGardens of Babylon at Nineveh,” in Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten: XXXIXe Rencontreassyriologique internationale, Heidelberg, 6–10 Juli 1992 (ed. Harald Hauptmann and HartmutWaetzoldt; Heidelberger Studien zum alten Orient 6; Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag,1997), 19–24; Bruce Lincoln, “À la recherche du paradis perdu,” HR 43 (2003): 139–54.

54 See the literature cited in the preceding footnote. Gardens belonging to cultic centerswould not have been the first targets in siege warfare insofar as they were located intramurally.

In the Assyrian sources they are destroyed as a part of punitive measures against cities; see below.55 Ingo Kottsieper “Bäume als Kultort,” in Das Kleid der Erde: Pflanzen in der Lebenswelt des

Alten Testaments (ed. Ute Neumann-Gorsolke and Peter Riede; Stuttgart: Calwer; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002), 169–87.







tactic aimed to achieve two related objectives: (1) to elicit a decisive battle on openground, and (2) to precipitate the city’s capitulation.56

Lengthy sieges were extremely costly for the beleaguerer—even more than forthe beleaguered. When one was attacked by a stronger opponent, the best strategy was to withdraw to the safety of one’s city and simply wait out the impending siege.Against large professional armies with well-organized logistical operations likethose of the Assyrians and Babylonians, such a plan was less effective. But againstsmall armies employing many conscripted soldiers who neither were adept at siege-craft nor could afford to neglect their farms for any extended time period, this wait-ing game was usually won by the besieged.57 For a commander it was thusimperative to provoke a quick and decisive battle in the field so that his levied sol-diers could return to their duties back home. Some accounts describe the meanswith which they seduced the besieged into battle,58 whereas most do not. The grad-

ual destruction of fruit trees, however, would have been a superb tactic with whichone could draw out the inhabitants of a city into the open where they could betrounced in battle.59

The second objective of orchard destruction in a siege situation was to bringabout an early surrender. The army would hold the trees “hostage” as if they werehuman captives, gradually killing them off when demands were not met. In EA 91the ransom was either a large amount of silver and gold or Byblos itself. Moreover,

56 See Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy = Devarim: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 190;Israel Eph‘al, “On Warfare and Military Control in the Ancient Near Eastern Empires,” in History,Historiography, and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures (ed. Hayim Tad-mor and Moshe Weinfeld; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983), 97; and idem, Siege, 54–55.

57

See Sun Tzu’s Art of War (fifth century c.e.

), which argues at length in ch. 3 that the worstpossible strategy is to besiege walled cities. One of the reasons given is time: it would require atleast six months to breach the walls (three months for logistical preparations and three monthsto build siege ramps); a skillful leader therefore subdues the enemy by means of a stratagem. Oneof the earliest Iron Age instances of a major siege is found at Tell es-Safi/Gath. See OrenAckermann, Hendrik J. Bruins, and Aren M. Maeir, “A Unique Human-Made Trench at Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel: Anthropogenic Impact and Landscape Response,” Geoarchaeology 20 (2005):303–28.

58 See the examples listed above in section III.59 Such was a conventional practice of early Greek armies. Foxhall writes in regard to the

Peloponnesians’ technique of crop ravaging: “[T]he aim was to crack the city’s unity. The threatperceived by individual households to their own subsistence was the enemy’s most powerfulweapon” (“Farm and Fighting,” 143). See also Yvon Garlan, Recherches de poliocrétique grecque(Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 223; Paris: de Boccard, 1974); as well asJ. K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley: University of Cal-

ifornia Press, 1970), 47–48; Josiah Ober, Fortress Attica: Defense of the Athenian Land Frontier,404–322 B.C. (Mnemosyne 84; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 32–35; and Paul Bentley Kern, Ancient SiegeWarfare (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 90–91, 97–98, 104.







because fruit trees were both lucrative sources of income and prestige objects, they belonged not only to the local ruler but also to other wealthy landowners.60 A char-acteristic feature of siege stories is the struggle between political factions withinthe city.61 The Rib-Adda correspondence speaks often of how the enemy pressuredpolitical actors within Byblos to depose their ruler and join forces with them.62

After describing how his orchards were ravaged, he remarks: “my own men havebecome hostile to me.”63 One way of coercing this power base to stage a putschwould have been to chop down fruit trees until the group cooperated.

This tactic of systematically razing orchards may be compared to later evi-dence collected by Steven W. Cole.64 When the Muslim armies laid siege to al-Hīrain the seventh century c.e., they threatened to destroy their fruit trees before thetown surrendered.65 Cole quotes the work of Fred Donner:

It was normal procedure for nomads wishing to subject an oasis to resort to a

process of psychological warfare; they invested the whole settlement, and thengradually cut down palm trees a few at a time until the residents, watching thedestruction of the town’s livelihood from the safety of their towers, finally agreedto pay tribute before too much damage was done.66

Early-nineteenth-century accounts refer to similar threats of razing orchards.According to Alois Musil, “If the nomads want to compel the settlers to pay themregular tribute, they encamp before the kasr [stronghold], . . . light a fire under oneof the large fruit trees, . . . threaten to burn and break all their trees and bushes,and in this manner force them to surrender.”67 The gradual nature of fruit treedestruction in these accounts corresponds to the situation of a protracted siegedepicted in Deut 20:19–20.

60 See, e.g., the schedule of estates with orchards assigned to officials (221) and the survey of large estates sold (222) in F. M. Fales and J. N. Postgate, Imperial Administrative Records, part2, Provincial and Imperial Administration (SAA 11; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1996).

61 For biblical accounts, see Jeremiah 36–38 (and perhaps Lachish Ostracon 6); 2 Samuel 20;2 Kings 7; and the insightful observations of Eph‘al, Siege, 55–57, 142–47.

62 See the attempted assassination in EA 81 and 138, as well as 69 and 85. On the theme ingeneral, see Liverani, “Rib-Adda,” 108–11.

63 See Youngblood, “Rib-Haddi,” 352. Liverani translates lines 13–15: “(Abdi-Ashirta) hastried to take Byblos and to cut my gardens down, so that my men have gone away/become hos-tile . . .” (“Rib-Adda,” 109).

64 Steven W. Cole, “The Destruction of Orchards in Assyrian Warfare,” in Assyria 1995, ed.Parpola and Whiting, 29–40, here 34–35.

65 Alois Musil, The Middle Euphrates: A Topographical Itinerary (Oriental Explorations andStudies 3; New York: AMS, 1927), 288.

66 Fred McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 30.

67 Musil, Middle Euphrates, 288.







tains, the Assyrian armies gradually destroyed fruit trees as a coercive siegecrafttactic, and if the readers of the royal inscriptions were familiar with this tactic, thenthe description of orchard destruction next to city walls would have been ineffec-tive as a face-saving device.

Cole also offers a questionable reading of the iconographic evidence. He refersto a relief from Sennacherib in Nineveh portraying the siege of Dilbat (fig. 1),





Fig. 1. Destruction of Dilbat’s date palms during the despoliation of the city. ArchibaldPaterson, Assyrian Sculptures: Palace of Sinacherib. Plates and Ground-plan of the Palace(The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1915), pl. 13.



Surveying the Assyrian reliefs, Hasel points out that in many cases trees arestill standing after the city has been captured, while there are no scenes of treesbeing cut down prior to a conquest. This observation provides a necessary correc-tive to Cole’s interpretation. Nevertheless, it fails to explain a scene from the CentralPalace of Tiglath-pileser III in Nimrud (fig. 3) in which a tree has been felled andthe trunk of another one can be seen to the right. Hasel claims that the first tree is

75

Hasel, Military Practice, 67–68, 89–90 n. 121. See also Richard D. Barnett and MargareteFalkner, The Sculptures of Assur-banipal II (883–859 BC) Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 BC) Esarhad-don (681–669 BC) from the Central and Southwest Palaces at Nimrud (London: British Museum,1962), slab 14a/plate XXXI (probably belonging to the same scene as that depicted in fig. 3), whichshows fallen date palms under a siege engine.





Fig. 3. Scene portraying a city being stormed and two fallen (date) palms (from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III). C. J. Gadd, Stones of Assyria: The Surviving Remains of Assyrian Sculpture, Their Recovery,and Their Original Positions (London: Chatto and Windus, 1936), pl. 12.

still standing and attributes its strange angle to the artist’s attempt to portray a dif-ferent perspective. His reproduction of the relief inexplicably does not include thetrunk of the second tree. An alternative interpretation of the scene is thus war-ranted.75

At the risk of generalizing, the depictions of destruction and demolition inAssyrian writing serve to emphasize the limitless fury of the king when it comes to



punishing rebels. When he goes to battle against an enemy, the king displays hisunfathomable glory and might by destroying everything in his path.76 A city is not

just despoiled and burned; its peripheral territory is also thoroughly denuded.77 Inkeeping with his dual nature, the Assyrian king could “build up” and create life by establishing cities and planting lush, exotic gardens,78 and he could also “tear down”and annihilate life by flattening cities and uprooting orchards.79 In composing pro-pagandistic texts, scribes drew on any image that could effectively communicatethe ideology of the empire.80 In the reliefs, the destruction of trees goes hand inhand with other measures of terror the army employed to vanquish resistance to theempire’s expansion.81 These measures are presented as the rightful recompense fora vassal’s rebellious behavior. The ruination of LSS can begin already during anattack on a city, as in fig. 3, yet more often it is executed after the defeat. Enemy lead-ers are impaled and flayed; divine images and symbols of power are ceremonially

deported; the temple and its gardens are desecrated; the rest of the city is sacked and

76 Thus, Sennacherib claims that “the terrifying radiance of my majesty overwhelmed” hisenemy; see, e.g., D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1924), 29:ii 38 and passim; and the studies by A. L. Oppenheim, “Akkadian pul(u)h(t)u andmelammu,” JAOS 63 (1943): 31–34; and Elena Cassin, La splendeur divine: Introduction à l’étudede la mentalité mésopotamienne (Civilisations et sociétés 8; The Hague: Mouton, 1968).

77 See, e.g., Walter Mayer, “Sargons Feldzug gegen Urartu – 714 v.Chr. Text und Über -setzung,” MDOG 115 (1983): 65–132.

78 See the literature cited above in n. 59.79 These images, which are already heavily imbued with divine associations, are appropri-

ated extensively by the biblical authors when describing the dual character of Israel’s God (see, e.g.,the numerous passages in Jeremiah in which a form of #tn occurs). The clearest point of contact

is when the Assyrian army serves as the instrument of divine wrath, as in Isa 10:5–19. In this way the power and ideology of Assyrian imperial rhetoric are subverted by one of its subjects. More-over, the destruction of an enemy is likened, as in Assyrian texts, to the destruction of a cedar, oak,or fruit tree in, e.g., Amos 2:9 and Isa 10:33–34. On the Assyrian evidence, see C. Zaccagnini, “AnUrartean Royal Inscription in the Report of Sargon’s Eighth Campaign,” in Assyrian Royal Inscrip-tions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis (ed. F. M. Fales; OrientisAntiqui Collectio XVII; Rome: Instituto per L’Oriente, 1981), 259–95, as well as the extensivecomments of Wazana, “Trees of the Field.”

80 For example, the actions of Tiglath-pileser I are compared to the flood ( abūbu); Liter-arische Keilschrifttexte aus Assur (ed. Erich Ebeling; Berlin: Akademie, 1953), 63 r. 14–18. See alsoVictor Horowitz and Joan G. Westenholz, “LKA 63: A Heroic Poem in Celebration of Tiglath-Pileser I’s Musru-Qumanu Campaign,” JCS 42 (1990): 1–49, here 4 r. 14–18. The correlationbetween flood and orchard destruction is found also much later in an account of Sargon IIrecounting the punishment of Aramaens; see Andreas Fuchs, Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad (Göttingen: Cuvillier, 1994), 148–49: 288–91. For Ninurta’s most prominent weapon, abūbu, see

Amar Annus, The God Ninurta in the Mythology and Royal Ideology of Ancient Mesopotamia (SAA14; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002), 122–33.

81 See Steven W. Holloway, Aššur Is King! Aššur Is King! Religion in the Exercise of Power inthe Neo-Assyrian Empire (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 10; Leiden: Brill, 2002).







burned, the population exiled, and the surrounding orchards chopped down.Everyone passing by the region should shudder in horror, and news of the atroci-ties should spread to other lands far and wide. Such is the rationale of Assyrianpsychological warfare. Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (“They devastate anarea and call it peace”) to borrow Tacitus’s description of the Roman imperial army ( Agricola 30).

These depictions of “shock and awe” warfare do not correspond to the conductforbidden in Deut 20:19–20. The biblical law, as argued above, censures a practiceof cutting down fruit trees when a city has still not capitulated after an extendedperiod, a practice representing the “the indirect approach” discussed above. In con-trast, the Assyrian reliefs and inscriptions depict orchard destruction as part of amore comprehensive denudation of a land and in reprisal for previous injuries.82

This practice, in keeping with its nature as recompense levied against impervious

peoples or rebellious rulers, aimed simultaneously to have a psychological effectby instilling fear in the hearts of both friend and foe. If the king failed to conquera city, he would adopt a “scorched earth policy,” despoiling, slashing, and burningeverything in sight before abandoning the region. By laying waste the LSS, hedeprived his enemies of a means of survival, thus rendering them ineffective as athreat to his homeland or the balance of power in the region.

It is worth noting that of the numerous depictions of orchard destruction inAssyrian inscriptions and reliefs, none relates to the southern Levant. To the con-trary, the Lachish reliefs portray the conquered city surrounded by more than onehundred trees of perhaps five different species, all still standing and laden withfruit.83

Some inscriptions do refer to acts of torture before gates of besieged cities,ostensibly as a method of applying psychological pressure. From this, Israel Eph‘al

suggests that the same would have been done with respect to orchards since thefelling of fruit trees is explicitly mentioned in several of these contexts. Neverthe-less, the evidence is not clear. For example, Ashurnasirpal claims to have impaledlive soldiers on posts before the city of Amedu and then to have fought his way inside the city and cut down its orchards.84 The point of the inscription, however,seems to be that the Assyrian king demonstrated his indisputable superiority overhis opponent by entering his royal city and tearing down his gardens. The uncon-quered city of Amedu had therefore to admit its de facto defeat. It is thus unwar-ranted to surmise that the desolation was gradual and meant to break the defenders’

82 See the examples cited in n. 80 above, as well as the comments of Hasel, Military Practice , 81.83 See Christoph Uehlinger, “Clio in a World of Pictures,” in “Like a Bird in a Cage” : The

Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; JSOTSup 363; London: Sheffield Aca-demic Press, 2003), 221–305, esp. 242–43.

84 See Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium, 2:220, as well as the similar caseof Hazael of Damascus in ibid., 3:48:14–17.







resistance slowly.85 The depicted situation does not therefore correspond toDeuteronomy 20.86

One cannot, however, preclude the possibility that the orchard destructionalso functioned as a coercive tactic of siegecraft. Although the Assyrians were sec-ond to none when it came to conventional siege techniques (sapping, ramming,tunneling, and scaling), such methods cost not only a lot of time but also exorbi-tant human and financial resources. Therefore Cole may be correct with respect toactual practice. In order to avoid these expenses, field commanders would haveresorted to the destruction of orchards as a way of forcing a city to capitulate. How-ever, we face a problem of evidence. Neither inscriptions nor letters, documents, orother non-propagandistic texts—the most reliable sources of information—witnessto this practice. Moreover, data from “mass media” witness to a coherent ideology of the Assyrians’ supremacy.87 If the authors of the Deuteronomic law indeed had

the Assyrian practice in view, we would expect them to have responded moreexplicitly to this ideology, rather than focusing on a method of orchard destructionthat was employed as a cost-saving tactic and that was more common to smallerarmies.

To summarize: Although it is quite likely that the Assyrians, as masters of siegecraft, recognized the potential of orchard destruction as a coercive measure,the available evidence presents them as felling fruit trees only in order to punishrebels. One must therefore exercise caution with respect to the suggestion that theDeuteronomic law originated as a reflex of, or even polemic against, Assyrian mil-itary practices. If it were intended as protest against this particular empire, onewould expect it to have been formulated in a way that corresponds more closely tothe Assyrian methods. In the inscriptions and reliefs, destruction of trees is a puni-tive measure and, rather than being isolated, is consistently part of a larger pro-

gram of destruction and despoliation. One would expect these aspects to be

85 Pace Eph‘al, Siege, 50–55.86 The evidence of 2 Kgs 18:31//Isa 36:16 is suggestive. The Assyrian king’s statements pos-

sibly imply that if the besieged Jerusalemites did not depose Hezekiah and open the city gates, thenAssyrian soldiers would destroy their vineyards, orchards, and cisterns (see Wazana, “Are theTrees of the Field Human?” 286). Yet this is probably reading too much into the statement. Morelikely is that the Jerusalemites are simply being offered the alternative between eating their dungand drinking their urine in the city (v. 27), and eating from their own fruit trees and drinking fromtheir own cisterns if they surrender. The same applies to 2 Kgs 19:29. Destruction is clearly threat-ened elsewhere (18:25 and 19:11), but it is not implicit in the rhetoric in this verse. Moreover, thedestruction referred to elsewhere is to the land in general and is part of a larger program of denudation, in keeping with the royal inscriptions and reliefs.

87 For the use of the expression “mass media” in this context, see Ursula Seidl, “Babyloni-

sche und assyrische Kultbilder in den Massenmedien des 1. Jahrtausends v.Chr.,” in Images as Media: Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (1st Mil-lennium BCE) (ed. Christoph Uehlinger; OBO 175; Fribourg: University Press; Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 89–114.







integrated into the law if it were formulated specifically against the Assyrians. Asit is, the reader has no reason to think specifically of these northern aggressors.The following sections consider the two sides of this argument in more detail.

VI. Reasons for Interpreting Deuteronomy 20:19–20

as an Anti-Assyrian Polemic

There are several reasons for the popularity of the view that the law respondsspecifically to Assyrian military conduct. The first has to do with the trajectory of Deuteronomy research since 1805, when Wilhelm M. L. de Wette submitted a dis-sertation proposing that the origins of Deuteronomy should be traced to the reignof Josiah.88 Although most scholars today insist that the law code contains older and

later material as well, they also insist that it must be understood within a geopolit-ical context dominated by Assyrian expansion.89

In the second half of the twentieth century, two streams of research began toconverge in Deuteronomy studies. On the one hand, works appeared arguingagainst the dependence of Deuteronomy on second-millennium Hittite treaties,and, on the other, these studies increasingly emphasized themes such as imperial-ism, ideology, and propaganda. The discovery of Esarhaddon’s vassal treaties in1955 prompted research that endeavored to show a genetic link between this doc-umentary form and Deuteronomy (esp. chs. 13 and 28). 90 Simultaneously, it

88 Wilhelm M. L. de Wette, Dissertatio critico-exegetica qua Deuteronomium . . . (Jena: LiterisEtzdorfii, 1805). The view was anticipated by Jerome; see Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews

(7 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1946), 6:377 n. 116.89 These claims have not gone uncontested; see, e.g., Reinhard G. Kratz, Die Komposition der erzählenden Bücher des Alten Testaments (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 137–38.

90 William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuter-onomy,” CBQ 25 (1963): 77–87; Dennis J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant: A Study in Form in the

Ancient Oriental Documents and in the Old Testament (AnBib 21; Rome: Biblical Institute, 1963);Moshe Weinfeld, “Traces of Assyrian Treaty Formulae in Deuteronomy,” Bib 46 (1965): 417–27;and R. Frankena, “The Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of Deuteronomy,” OtSt 14(1965): 123–54. For more recent works, see Paul-Eugène Dion, “Deuteronomy 13: The Suppres-sion of Alien Religious Propaganda in Israel during the Late Monarchical Era,” in Law and Ideol-ogy in Monarchic Israel (ed. Baruch Halpern and Deborah W. Hobson; JSOTSup 124; Sheffield:Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 147–216; Bernard M. Levinson, “‘But You Shall Surely Kill Him!’:The Text-Critical and Neo-Assyrian Evidence for MT Deut 13:10,” in Bundesdokument und Gesetz:Studien zum Deuteronomium (ed. Georg Braulik; Herders Biblische Studien 4; Freiburg: Herder,1995), 37–63; Hans Ulrich Steymans, “Eine assyrische Vorlage für Deuteronomium 28,20–44:

Bundesdokument und Gesetz,” in Studien zum Deuteronomium, ed. Braulik, 119–41; idem,Deuteronomium 28 und die adê zur Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons: Segen und Fluch im AltenOrient und in Israel (OBO 145; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1995); Eckart Otto, “Treueid andGesetz: Die Ursprünge des Deuteronomiums im Horizont neuassyrischen Vertragsrechts,” ZABR







sparked renewed interest in the reigns of Manasseh and Josiah and the question of Assyria’s imposition of an imperial cult upon its vassals.91 The attention devoted toimperialism was in turn fed by social and political developments of the late 1960sand subsequent years. These changes left their mark on various disciplines in thehumanities—not least on Assyriology, which has traditionally had the most directinfluence on Deuteronomy research.92 Today interest in the multifaceted Judeanresponses to Assyria and her imperial successors has grown.93 It should not be sur-prising, however, that this lively interest has occasionally aroused an eagerness todiscover a subversion of, and protests against, the empire in texts that are innocentof such grand political motives.94

Another reason for the popularity of the view that the law addresses Assyrianmilitary conduct is the profusion of Assyrian witnesses to the practice of denudinglands and felling orchards. What seems to have been overlooked, however, is that

2 (1996): 1–52; idem, Das Deuteronomium: Politische Theologie und Rechtsform in Juda und Assyrien (BZAW 284; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), esp. 13–56.

91 See J. W. McKay, Religion in Judah under the Assyrians, 732–609 BC (SBT 2/26; London:SCM, 1973); Morton Cogan, Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E. (SBLMS 19; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1974); and Hermann Spiecker-mann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit (FRLANT 129; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,1982).

92 See, e.g., the various papers in Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires(ed. Mogens Trolle Larsen; Mesopotamia 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1979), esp. 297–317 (MarioLiverani’s contribution, “The Ideology of the Assyrian Empire”).

93 For an example of this development in another book, such as Isaiah, see the fine articlesby Peter Machinist (“Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,” JAOS 103 [1983]: 719–37, and

“Mesopotamian Imperialism and Israelite Religion: A Case Study from the Second Isaiah,” inSymbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past [ed. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin;Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003], 237–64) and Moshe Weinfeld (“The Protest against Impe-rialism in Ancient Israelite Prophecy,” in The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations [ed.S. N. Eisenstadt; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986], 169–82).

94 Several scholars have criticized the attempts to draw a genetic link between Esarhaddon’streaties and Deuteronomy. See, e.g., Timo Veijola, “Wahrheit und Intoleranz nach Deuterono-mium 13,” ZTK 92 (1995): 287–314; Juha Pakkala, “Der literar- und religionsgeschichtliche Ort von Deuteronomium 13” in Redaktions- und religionsgeschichtliche Perspektiven zur ‘Deuterono-mismus’—Diskussion in Tora und Vorderen Propheten (ed. Jan Christian Gertz et al.; BZAW 365;Berlin: de Gruyter; 2006), 125–37; and above all Christoph Koch’s comparison of Deuteronomy,Esarhaddon’s vassal treaties and the Sefire treaties (“Vertrag, Treueid und Bund: Studien zurRezeption des altorientalischen Vertragsrechts im Deuteronomium und zur Ausbildung derBundestheologie im Alten Testament” [Dr. theol. diss., University of Heidelberg, 2006]), whichbuilds on ideas of Hayim Tadmor, “Aramaization of Assyria,” in Mesopotamien und seine Nach-

barn: Politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr.: XXV. Rencontre assyriologique internationale Berlin 3. bis 7. Juli 1978 (ed. Hans-Jörg Nissenand Johannes Renger; 2 vols.; Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 1; Berlin: Reimer, 1982),2:449–70.







the destruction of LSS, and specifically trees, is just as widely witnessed for otherimperial armies, such as those of the Hittites and New Kingdom Egypt.95 Sourcesfrom the Neo-Babylonian empire and Persia contain admittedly far fewer refer-ences to the destruction of orchards. The disparity is nevertheless due to the natureof the material. The Assyrian annals, structured according to military campaignsand boasting great feats in battle, can be traced to Hittite precursors. This inscrip-tional tradition is, however, foreign to the Babylonian sources. As David Vander-hooft suggests, the fact that the Babylonians do not adopt it, preferring insteadconsciously to archaize their chronicles according to earlier models, may be due totheir long-standing antipathy for their northern neighbors.96 Similarly, they do notseem to have produced narrative reliefs depicting sieges and battles.97 This doesnot mean, as often claimed, that they were less violent or militant than the Assyr-ians. To the contrary, archaeological evidence from Ashkelon, for example, sup-

ports the statements of the Babylonian Chronicle, graphically illustrating theferocity with which Babylonian armies could achieve their geopolitical aspira-tions.98 That also the extramural trees were often targeted for destruction is prob-able. If so, it would correspond to Jeremiah’s descriptions of Babylon (6:6; 7:20;22:7; 46:22–23).99

A second point seeming to support the interpretation of Deut 20:19–20 asanti-Assyrian polemic is that a particular aspect of the reliefs appears to match the

95 For the Hittites, see Ahmet Ünal, “Untersuchungen zur Terminologie der hethitischenKriegsführung, Teil 1, ‘Verbrennen, in Brand stecken’ als Kriegstechnik,” Or 52 (1983): 164–80;idem, “Studien über das hethitische Kriegswesen, II, Verba Delendi harnink/harganu—‘vernichten, zugrunde richten,’” Studi Miceni ed Egeo-Anatolica 24 (1984): 71–85; Sylvia Hutter-

Braunsar, “Die Terminologie der Zerstörung eroberten Acker- und Siedlunglandes in hethitischenKönigsinschriften,” in Der orientalische Mensch und seine Beziehungen zur Umwelt (ed. Bern-hard R. Scholz; Graz Morgenländische Studien 2; Graz: RM-Druck & Verlag, 1989), 201–18. ForNew Kingdom Egypt, see Michael G. Hasel, Domination and Resistance: Egyptian Military Activ-ity in the Southern Levant 1300–1185 B.C. (Probleme der Ägyptologie 11; Leiden: Brill, 1998),75–83; idem, “A Textual and Iconographic Note on prt and mnt in Egyptian Military Accounts,”Göttinger Miszellen 168 (1998): 61–72; and idem, Military Practice, 104–13.

96 See David Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets(HSM 59; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 22–23. The Babylonian and Esarhaddon chronicles donot even report that the Assyrians destroyed orchards on their campaigns.

97 For reasons why the Assyrians preferred this medium of art, see Irene Winter, “Art as Evi-dence for Interaction: Relations between the Assyrian Empire and North Syria,” in Mesopotamienund Seine Nachbarn, ed. Nissen and Renger, 2:355–81. One of the very few extant Babylonianreliefs significantly shows the felling of cedar trees; see F. H. Weissbach,Die Inschriften Nebukad-nezars II im Wadi Brisa und am Nahr El-Kelb (WVDOG 5; Leipzig: Biblio-Verlag, 1906).

98 Lawrence E. Stager, “Ashkelon and the Archaeology of Destruction: Kislev 604 BCE,”ErIsr 25 (1996): 61–74.

99 The sixteenth-century commentator Moshe Alshich suggests that Jeremiah alludes hereto Deut 20:19–20.







biblical text. The Assyrian soldiers are always depicted felling trees with axes, a toolto which Deut 20:19 explicitly refers (Nzrg wyl( xdnl). This correspondence, however,is less significant than it appears at first. How else could the troops expect to cutdown a tree? Saws were not used for this purpose until the eighteenth century c.e.in Europe.100 Not only did burning a tree pose more problems than chopping itdown, but also sources from other times and places present armies using thismethod against their enemies.101

Another reason is the lack of biblical evidence: Whereas the Assyrian sourcespresent orchard destruction in a situation of siege, the biblical accounts do not.This, too, may seem to be a strong argument in favor of the anti-Assyrian inter-pretation, yet a closer examination reveals critical flaws. Just as in the case of axes,depictions of tree destruction in siege situations are not confined to Assyriansources. One must also consider the functional differences between biblical war

accounts and royal inscriptions. In stark contrast to the latter, biblical accountsserve a pedagogical purpose for generations long after the wars and eventsdescribed. Their authors seek to find deeper meaning in this history. In recountingand interpreting the past, they shape the identity of a people, especially in a periodduring which Israel no longer possessed a king and army of its own. As one wouldexpect from such literature, the most basic information regarding warfare andsiegecraft, not to mention military and societal structures, is extremely meager.More often than not, its authors depict only unusual events on the battlefield,emphasizing the roles of priests and prophets in the place of tacticians and com-manders. The lack of a direct correspondence to the practice forbidden in Deut20:19–20 should therefore be no more of a surprise than the absence of accountsdescribing many of the most routine aspects of daily life in ancient Israel.102

VII. Deuteronomy 20:19–20 as a Product

of an Intra-Societal Discourse

If the Deuteronomic prohibition does not protest against Assyrian martialconduct, then which empire does it have in view? Is it the Neo-Babylonians, or per-

100 See Herbert Killian, “Vom ‘Schinderblech’ zum Diebswerkzeug: Ein Rückblick auf die400jährige Geschichte unserer Waldsäge,” Centralblatt für das Gesamte Forstwesen 97 (1980): 65–101; Peter d’Alroy Jones, Story of the Saw (Manchester: Spear & Jackson, 1961); and Franz MariaFeldhaus, Die Säge: Ein Rückblick auf vier Jahrtausende (Berlin: Dominicus, 1921).

101 See, e.g., Hasel, Domination, 75–82. For use of axes by Israelite besiegers, see Judg 9:48–49.102 This is in response to Hasel’s question, “[I]f this practice was so widely employed in Israel

as to warrant a polemic response, why do we not find any mention of it in the conquest accountsof Joshua and Judges, or in the wars described in Samuel through the rest of Kings?” ( MilitaryPractice, 133). Hasel seems to read these books as if they merely recorded Israelite history.







haps New Kingdom Egypt, as Michael Hasel argues?103 The problem posed by thisquestion is not so much the identity of the perpetrator as the very assumption thatthe law must condemn the behavior of another people.104 A similar premise seemsto be operative in Maimonides’ claim that seething a kid in its mother’s milk wasprohibited because it was “somehow connected to idolatry, forming perhaps partof the service, or being used on some festival of the heathen.”105 That even the mostmundane practices sanctioned by Deuteronomy betray a foreign cultic-religiousprovenance is an idea whose origins are in the book itself. Referring to its category of the “indigenous outsiders,” Louis Stulman points out how the authors of Deuteronomy create communal identity and provide Israel with a survival strategy by attributing what they proscribe to non-Israelites.106 Both Maimonides and con-temporary commentators carry this project a step forward by discovering foreignorigins for practices that the book does not designate as non-Israelite and that were

likely common to Israel and Judah. The difference between the medieval and mod-ern biblical scholar is that the latter, in keeping with the trend of postcolonial stud-ies in the humanities, often identifies the target of attack not with the cult of theCanaanites but rather with the propaganda of “the empire.”107 Although there aremany biblical texts that reflect the ways Israel and Judah responded to the pressureof foreign empires, Deut 20:19–20 is probably not one of them. Rather than aninter -societal polemic, this law, I propose, constitutes a reflex of an intra-societalexchange on acceptable conduct for Israelite and Judean armies.108

Evidence for this claim is found first in the foregoing laws in Deuteronomy 20.It would be difficult to imagine how the regulations concerning exemptions from

103 See Hasel, Military Practice .104 Thus Christopher Wright, while dating Deuteronomy earlier, nevertheless assumes that

the law “was set up in contrast with practices of Israel’s contemporaries” (Deuteronomy [NIB-COT; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996], 230).

105 See Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed 3:48. Modern studies carrying this approachforward include Othmar Keel, Das Böcklein in der Milch seiner Mutter und Verwandtes: im Lichteeines altorientalischen Bildmotivs (OBO 333; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1990); and Ernst AxelKnauf, “Zur Herkunft und Sozialgeschichte Israels: ‘Das Böcklein in der Milch seiner Mutter,’” Bib69 (1988): 153–69. For more on the interpretation of this law, see below with n. 121.

106 Louis Stulman, “Encroachment in Deuteronomy: An Analysis of the Social World of theD Code,” JBL 109 (1990): 613–32.

107 The religious character of this propaganda nevertheless continues to be emphasized.108 Rather than being mutually exclusive, intra-societal norm formation and inter-societal

boundary drawing are projects that reinforce each other. Both relate to strategies of survival, andboth build identity. But whereas the latter functions to demarcate and protect a people’s distinc-tiveness, the former strengthens the ethical foundation for its longevity. Thus, ethics is the objec-tive of the former, while its formulation is presupposed by and subsumed to the task of the latter.(Contact with other peoples nevertheless necessarily influences and incites intra-societal dis-courses.) For a somewhat similar understanding of inter- vs. intra-societal dynamics, see MikeFeatherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (2nd ed.; London: Sage,2000).







military service (vv. 5–8) or directions for pre-battle negotiations and rules of engagement (vv. 9–18) also represent protests against Neo-Assyrian military prac-tices. Why, then, should the final paragraph (vv. 19–20) be any different? Appar-ently recognizing this inconsistency, Eckart Otto argues that the entire chapterindeed constitutes anti-Assyrian polemics. For example, he contends that Israel isrequired always to offer a city conditions of surrender before assailing it (vv. 10–12),whereas the Assyrians did this only rarely.109 Otto’s approach is hardly compelling,and it illustrates the dangers of searching too zealously for anti-imperial polemicsin every corner of Deuteronomy. There is no need to pit these laws against theAssyrians when practices they condemn were quite common to the ancient world,including Israel and Judah.

The Bible itself witnesses to a bellic ethos that is fundamentally opposed to theprinciples set forth in Deuteronomy.110 For example, when fighting against

Shechem, Abimelech fails to offer the city terms of peace. Not only that, he killsthe inhabitants indiscriminately, razes the city, and sows it with salt (Judg 9:45).Thereafter he and his soldiers proceed to cut boughs from trees with axes (twmdrq)and set ablaze the place where survivors had taken refuge (vv. 46–49).111 Similarly,in 2 Kings 3 Elisha prophesies divine aid for the Israelite coalition in its campaignagainst Mesha of Moab: “[YHWH] will also hand over Moab to you. You shall con-quer every fortified city and every choice city; every good tree you shall fell , allsprings of water you shall stop up, and every good piece of land you shall pain withstones” (vv. 18–19).112 In telling how the coalition forces do just as Elisha prophe-sies, this text represents one of the clearest biblical witnesses to ecocidal and urbi-cidal aspects of ancient Israelite warfare.

The applicability of the Deuteronomic law to the situation depicted in2 Kings 3 has been disputed. Michael Hasel and Nili Wazana argue that the law is

said to refer specifically to a situation of siege, while 2 Kings 3 describes how anentire land was laid waste.113 Yet if the law forbids the destruction of fruit trees even

109 Otto, Krieg und Frieden, 101–3. Otto argues that the Assyrians most often first appliedmilitary pressure and then negotiated. As evidence, he refers to 2 Kings 18–19 and a relief fromSargon II that shows an Assyrian officer reading a scroll while facing the walls of a besieged city (see Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963], 320, 425).

110 In contrast to later books, Joshua depicts warfare in keeping with these rules. The erad-ication of the Canaanites follows Deut 20:15–18. Joshua 9 plays on the distinction made by theselaws between distant peoples and the Seven Nations; see the comments of Michael Fishbane, Bib-lical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 206.

111 His actions directly violate not only vv. 19–20 but above all vv. 10–14.112 The use of the word “pain” (by)khl) to describe the ecocidal actions against the land

resembles the use of “kill” (tymhl) to describe the urbicidal actions against Abel-Beth-Maacah in

2 Sam 20:19. See also hd#h C( Md)h yk in Deut 20:19.113 Hasel, Military Practice; and Wazana, “Are the Trees of the Field Human?” 285–86, 294.

One could attempt to harmonize Elisha’s prophecy with Deuteronomy 20 by arguing that Moablay beyond the borders of Israel and thus would not come within the purview of the law. Such an







when a surrender was not forthcoming after “many days,” then how much moredoes it preclude beginning a campaign by ruining “every good tree” along with allthe LSS (every choice city, fertile field, and water source)?114 The operative juridi-cal principle here is a fortiori or rmwxw lq. That 2 Kings 3 depicts a violation of thelaw could not be more patent.115

Wazana contends, however, that Deut 20:19–20 is more applicable to theAssyrian sources, since both refer to situations of protracted sieges. Yet reading thestory in 2 Kings 3 with its conclusion in view, we can better appreciate why theauthor emphasizes the demolition of the Moabite lands. After a lengthy siege, thecoalition forces had failed to capture the city Kir-hareseth and above all Mesha,who had rebelled against Israelite control (see 3:5 and 1:1). One may compare thenarrative to the aforementioned “face-saving device” in the Assyrian royal inscrip-tions employed by scribes when the king failed to capture an insurgent ruler. The

demolition is highlighted in order to remove all doubt that the imperial army had vanquished and punished the king’s enemy. This device parallels a similar conven-tion in omen texts. Thus, YOS 10 41:74–75 reads: “the city, which you are going tobesiege—you will cut down its (grove of) date palm(s) (then) you will go away (from it) . . . .”116 As in the Assyrian royal inscriptions, the lack of success in tak-ing the city is compensated by the destruction of the orchards, and in this respect

approach is taken by Hasel with regard to vv. 19–20 (“The Destruction of Trees in the MoabiteCampaign of 2 Kings 3:4–27: A Study in the Laws of Warfare,” AUSS 40 [2002]: 197–206; andidem, Military Practice, 129–37). The interpretation fails, however, to appreciate the redactionalcharacter of vv. 15–18, which was cogently demonstrated by Alexander Rofé (Introduction toDeuteronomy [in Hebrew; Jerusalem: Akademon, 1982], 17–28) and has been accepted by most

commentators since. Yet even after this insertion it is not at all clear that vv. 19–20 pertain only to wars against the Seven Nations. A second argument Hasel offers is that 2 Kings 3 does not referto fruit trees. But does not “every good tree” include by definition trees that bear fruit?

114 The same point was made already by Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, 1461–63.115 Since the texts may have originated in much different times and places, this violation

emerges only with the placement of the law in its present narrative context. Most commentators,both ancient and modern, agree that the actions of the coalition are in fundamental oppositionto the norms in Deuteronomy 20. To account for the contradiction, various solutions are pro-posed. See the individual studies of Raymond Westbrook, “Elisha’s True Prophecy in 2 Kings 3,”

JBL 124 (2005): 530–32; Jesse C. Long, Jr., and Mark Sneed, “‘Yahweh Has Given These ThreeKings into the Hand of Moab’: A Socio-Literary Reading of 2 Kings 3,” in Inspired Speech: Prophecyin the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Herbert B. Huffmon (ed. John Kaltner and Louis Stul-man; JSOTSup 378; London: T&T Clark, 2004), 253–75; Joe M. Sprinkle, “Deuteronomic ‘JustWar’ (Deut 20,10-20) and 2 Kings 3,27,” ZABR 6 (2000): 285–301; Philip D. Stern, “Of Kings andMoabites: History and Theology in 2 Kings 3 and the Mesha Inscription,” HUCA 64 (1993): 1–14;

and John Barclay Burns, “Why Did the Besieging Army Withdraw? (II Reg 3,27),” ZAW 102(1990): 187–94.

116 A. Goetze, Old Babylonian Omen Texts (YOS 10; New Haven: Yale University Press,1947). Other omina in this series relate to military failures and successes.







it may be compared to Elisha’s prophecy. From these observations, the two aspectsof the story—siege and the felling of fruit trees—belong together just as much as inthe Assyrian sources.117

But another look at the structure of Deuteronomy 20 reveals that this com-pendium of war laws uses specific scenarios to illustrate more general points andthus should not be confined to siege warfare. Verses 2–8 treat the priest’s address tothe troops before the battle. Verse 9 transitions to the appointment of commanders.The next paragraph sets forth rules of engagement, beginning with cities that sur-render prior to battle (vv. 10–11) and then turning to those which do not (vv. 12–14). This progressive unfolding of a battle scenario continues in vv. 19–20, whichconcerns a tactic for forcing cities to capitulate. Since siegecraft was the predominantform of warfare for all armies of ancient Western Asia and the Eastern Mediter-ranean, it is not surprising that the author chooses to begin with this scenario in vv.

10–11. That siege is still the focus of vv. 19–20 seems therefore to be governed by thelegal logic of the chapter, not a concern to formulate a protest against Assyrian impe-rial ideology. Just as the rules of engagement in vv. 10–18 are not to be limited tosiegecraft, even though they refer only to cities, the law forbidding fruit tree destruc-tion should also not be unduly confined to a situation of a prolonged siege. Theseare merely typical cases requiring the interpreter to employ principles of casuistry and analogic reasoning to elicit the full scope of their application.118

Finally, we have observed that in both the Assyrian sources and the biblicaltexts, trees are consistently destroyed with other components of LSS. Why, then,does the law focus solely on fruit trees? One explanation was offered in the dis-cussion of siege tactics in sections III–IV above. Another reason is provided by acomparison of the law to others in Deuteronomy. Calum M. Carmichael and J. G.McConville point to the correspondences between it and the prohibition regarding

the bird’s nest in 22:6–7.119 According to this law, one must abstain from taking amother bird with her eggs or fledglings “in order that you may fare well and havea long life” (see also 5:16). If everyone were to take the dam and her young together,soon the land would suffer from a severe wildlife shortage; this is the first princi-ple of conservation ethics.120 Carmichael relates this law to the prohibition of

117 Wazana’s further claim (“Are the Trees of the Field Human?” 294) that the Assyrian textsfocus solely on trees (as in Deut 20:19–20), while 2 Kings 3 mentions trees only in passing, doesnot agree with the evidence: trees are mentioned most often along with grain or others objects of despoliation.

118 For a brilliant treatment of these principles, see Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen EdelstonToulmin in The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1988).

119 Calum M. Carmichael, The Laws of Deuteronomy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974),151–56; and J. G. McConville, Law and Theology in Deuteronomy (JSOTSup 33; Sheffield: JSOTPress, 1984), 17–18.

120 For the development of this principle of conservation biology, see Raymond F. Dasmann,







seething a kid in its mother’s milk in 14:21 (see also Exod 23:19 and 34:26). Hiscomparison is all the more insightful if the word “milk” (blfxf) should be repointedto read “fat” (blE x').121 As in the case of the dam, this law may forbid destruction of the bearer of life also out of interest for the longevity of Israel’s LSS. A similar ration-ale underlies the tree law in 20:19–20. One may partake of the fruit but is forbid-den to cut down its source.122 If an army destroys fruit trees when a city resists,then the trees will not be there when the city surrenders and its subsistence will beseverely jeopardized.123 Moreover, if the tactic does not work, the trees would be of use neither to the attackers nor to the residents of the city. Either way, everyoneloses.124

In all three cases, the law formulates a more abstract point by way of a prac-tical example. This use of analogia is a typical pedagogical tool that can be foundthroughout wisdom literature. Rofé has drawn attention to the influence of the wis-

dom tradition on the entire collection of war laws, but especially Deut 20:19–20.125

“Conservation of Natural Resources,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 1 (New York: CharlesScribner’s Sons, 1973), 470–77.

121 Raik Heckl, “Helaeb oder Hālāb? Ein möglicher Einfluss der frühjüdischen Halacha auf die Vokalisation des MT in Ex 23,19b; Ex 34,26b; Dtn 14,21b,“ ZAH 14 (2001): 144–58. The sameargument is made by Jack M. Sasson, “Ritual Wisdom? On ‘Seething a Kid in its Mother’s Milk,’”in Kein Land für sich allein: Studien zum Kulturkontakt in Canaan, Israel/ Palästina und Ebirnari

für Manfred Weippert zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. Ulrich Hübner and Ernst Axel Knauf; OBO 186;Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 2002), 294–308. Alternatively, the law could represent a prohibitionof butchering the calf while it is still suckling, as argued by Stefan Schorch (“‘A Young Goat in ItsMother’s Milk’? Understanding an Ancient Prohibition,” Paper delivered at the SBL InternationalMeeting in Vienna, 2007). Support for this interpretation is found in On Abstinence 4.14, where

Porphyry claims that “the legislator” forbade Jews to slaughter animals that were parents togetherwith their young.

122 This ethos underlies the Torah’s first dietary ethos. Referring to Gen 1:29-30, Leon Kasswrites: “Eating seeds and fruits does not harm the parent plants; eating fruit and discarding theseeds does not even interfere with the next generation” (The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfect-ing of Our Nature [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999], 206).

123 Notice the emphasis on enjoyment of house, vineyard, and wife (and eating of spoils) in vv. 5–14.

124 The law’s motivation may indeed be utilitarian; yet following Alexander Rofé we shouldnote that it is concerned for the LSS of both groups of belligerents, not just the aggressors (seeRofé, Introduction to Deuteronomy, 28–29). In one of his discussions of Deut 20:19–20, Philoquotes the maxim that one should provide in peace the things necessary for war, and in war thethings desirable in peace (De humanitate 29.153). By felling trees, one gives the conquered rea-sons for unrelenting rancor and has destroyed the very thing for which the war was undertaken.This point is made often in Greco-Roman literature; see, e.g., Alexander’s speech in Polybius 18.3(the same speech ends in Livy 32.33 by observing the ludicrousness of destroying the very landsfor which the war was waged and thereby leaving in the end nothing but war).

125 Rofé, Introduction to Deuteronomy. Moshe Weinfeld has demonstrated the extent towhich Deuter-onomy appropriates wisdom sayings within a legal framework which in turn is







Wazana follows Rofé in this regard and even observes the similarities to the damand kid laws. She does not, however, address the problem it poses. Although Maimonides, as noted above, interpreted the kid law as a prohibition of non-Israelite culinary practices, one has yet to claim that it and the dam law constituteanti-Assyrian polemics. Why, then, should the closely related tree law be any dif-ferent? True, a relief from Assurbanipal’s lion-hunting series portrays hunters inprocession carrying two nests full of fledglings and (presumably) one of the dams(see fig. 4), yet should one postulate on the basis of this evidence that the dam lawrepresents a protest against Assyrian hunting practice?

ascribed to divine revelation; see “The Dependence of Deuteronomy upon Wisdom,” in Yehezkel Kaufmann Jubilee Volume (ed. Menahem Haran: Jerusalem: Magnes, 1960), hq–+p (Hebrew);

and idem, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School , 244–80. For a wisdom background to otherlegal corpora in the Bible, see Bernard S. Jackson, Wisdom-Laws: A Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 21:1–22:16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 35–39 et passim.





Fig. 4. Eunuchs carrying two nests and bird in procession after a lion hunt. Photographof original relief in British Museum (BM 124889) taken by author.



Given the multitude of problems with the anti-Assyrian approach, it seemsmore prudent to follow Rofé’s lead. Accordingly, the law may stem from wisdom cir-cles whose martial ethos was fundamentally opposed to a popular bellic ideal. 126

Valued in some Israelite and Judean circles, this ideal was disparaged in others. In2 Kgs 8:11–13 the same prophet who once promoted a campaign of terror againstMoab now weeps in anticipation of Hazael’s ruthless actions of slaughtering chil-dren and ripping open pregnant women in Israel.127 Hazael himself claims thatonly a reprobate (lit., “a dog,”) could do such a thing (2 Kgs 8:11–13). The practice,ascribed to both Israel and her neighbors (2 Kgs 15:16; Hos 14:1), is condemnedelsewhere (Amos 1:13) and rendered illicit by Deut 20:13–14.128 A contiguity of such criticism to wisdom traditions is suggested by 2 Samuel 20, which treats, interalia, the urbicide of an Israelite city. In this account, a “wise woman” declares toJoab and those destroying (Mtyx#m) the wall of Abel: “You seek to kill (tymhl) a

city and mother [or: a city that is mother] in Israel. Why will you swallow up thepossession of Yhwh?” (v. 19). Joab responds, “Far be it, far be it from me that Ishould swallow up or destroy (tyx#) [v. 20]).”129 Thanks to this woman’s “wis-dom,” the city is saved from demolition at the hands of David’s soldiers (v. 22).130

One may compare this story to the account in Eccl 9:13–18 of a “poor wise man”who through “his wisdom” saved his city when it was besieged by a great king.

126 The biblical book of Proverbs also refers to siege tactics several times (see n. 36 above);see also Eccl 7:19; 9:18; and Isa 10:13. This evidence corresponds to references to military tacticsthroughout Egyptian and Akkadian wisdom literature, the most famous example of which is theAhiqar traditions. It is likely that officers, both Assyrian and Israelite, would have been trained

not just in clever stratagems but also in acceptable tactics. See, e.g., the critique of wanton destruc-tion implicit in the Akkadian proverb: “You went and plundered enemy territory. The enemy came and plundered your territory” (K.4347+16161; Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature,239–50, here lines 14–17). The witness of Greco-Roman literature is suggestive. Of the innumer-able protests against the practice of destroying lands, trees, crops, and houses, most are placed onthe lips of respected philosophers or personalities famous for their wisdom. In addition, see theliterature cited in n. 124.

127 In both chs. 3 and 8, Elisha refers, inter alia, to the destruction of “fortifications” (Myrcbm).

128 Many biblical texts (above all, the flood story and the Latter Prophets) portray a trans-formation in the deity: from destroying the earth or Israel’s lands (often explicitly trees) to prom-ising never again to do so.

129 In 2 Kings 3 the felling of trees goes hand in hand with the destruction of cities. For othertexts with tx#, see Josh 22:23; 1 Sam 23:10; and 2 Sam 11:1 (1 Chr 20:1).

130 Through the statements of the wise woman and Joab, the text may also intend to affirm

that the border city of Abel belonged to Israel against territorial claims by Arameans (Beth-Maacah) and later Assyrians (after Tiglath-pileser III); see Hayim Tadmor, “The Southern Bor-der of Aram,” IEJ 12 (1962): 114–22.







VIII. Summary and Conclusions

Our aim has been to reexamine the origins of Deut 20:19-20, a law that, thanksto Hugo Grotius, has had a lasting impact on modern military conventions. Webegan by distinguishing between two types of wartime destruction (unintentionaland deliberate). The law, which forbids a form of the second type, was then stud-ied in the context of ancient siegecraft. We noted that primitive warfare was largely ineffective against well-fortified cities. Many small armies, consisting of a major-ity of levied soldiers, therefore were often forced to adopt an “indirect approach,”which included the use of subterfuge and various ruses. One of these tactics was thegradual destruction of orchards, a practice forbidden by the Deuteronomic law. Ininterrogating the widely accepted premise that this law represents a protest against

Neo-Assyrian imperial ideology, we observed that the text fails to provide neces-sary signals that would have alerted the reader to think specifically of the Assyrianpractice of felling orchards. Moreover, many biblical writers depict ancient Israeliteand Judean armies ravaging enemy LSS, acts categorically banned by the law. Thus,if the Assyrian method of denudation is condemned by the law, then the Israeliteand Judean methods are too.

In both biblical texts and Assyrian inscriptions/reliefs, fruit-tree destructionis never isolated but always part of larger programs of ecocide and urbicide. Onemust therefore explain why the law singles out fruit trees. We offered two reasons:(1) Fruit trees belonged to the most valuable components of LSS and thus wereoften felled by besiegers in order to force a city to capitulate and as an alternativeto direct assault. (2) The law parallels two others in Deuteronomy that condemn thedestruction of the source of life with its “fruit” (the dam and her fledglings/eggs in

22:6–7 and the mother goat with her kid in 14:21). Rather than polemics against theAssyrians or any other empire, these laws seem to have emerged from an inner-biblical or intra-societal discourse, perhaps in wisdom circles, on sustainable strate-gies for treating one’s LSS.131

We may conclude by taking a step back and considering the general nature of the war laws in Deuteronomy 20. Each treats the most critical points of combat:before a city is attacked, when a city surrenders, when it resists, and so on. Thesame applies for vv. 19-20, which treats a scenario in which the besiegers cannotexpect a city’s imminent capitulation. For a field commander, this situation con-sistently poses the most challenging dilemma. When in want of an effective strat-agem or ruse, should one wait out the siege and run the risk of soldiers desertingin order to tend to their farms? Or should one resort to a tactic that, while prom-

131 For the historic debate between Meyer and Wellhausen on the intra- versus inter-societaldynamics that led to the emergence of Judaism, see Reinhard G. Kratz, “Die Entstehung des Juden-tums: Zur Kontroverse zwischen E. Meyer und J. Wellhausen,” ZTK 95 (1998): 167–84.







ising to deliver instant results, would have long-term detrimental effects on one’sown or the enemy’s LSS?132 In wartime these questions are even more onerous, andthus most modern armies realize the importance of manuals of military conduct. 133

Similarly, the international community has codified military conventions fornations at war. One of the first steps in the direction of these written war laws andmilitary codes of conduct was taken by Deuteronomy.134

This first step, however, may seem small. Instead of focusing on fruit trees,the law could have proscribed much more extreme cases of ecocide, not to mentionpractices of slaughtering children or raping women. But precisely in its seemingtriviality resides its juridical potential. Rather than mentioning all the possible sce-narios, the law censures the less drastic practice in order to include everything moreextreme in its purview.135 Now if it is forbidden to resort to a tactic that severely

jeopardizes a region’s LSS in order to precipitate an enemy’s capitulation, then it is

by all means unacceptable to resort to mass destruction for the same purpose.Verses 10–14 already define when it is permissible to take human life, drawing clearlines between adult males, on the one hand, and women and children, on theother.136 Having addressed the licit use of lethal force, the chapter then continuesto spell out restrictions on Israelite armies in vv. 19–20. The reason for this finalprohibition seems to be that humans need these trees to survive (C( Md)h ykhd#h).137 This explains why the law allows only non-fruit trees (or trees no longer

132 It is in this situation that armies have historically committed the most war atrocities,either against captives or against LSS. The question is still debated: Is mass killing justified if iteventually might save more lives by bringing the war to an earlier end? See most recently A. C.Grayling, Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a

Crime? (London: Bloomsbury, 2006); and Michael Walzer, Arguing about War (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2004).133 See, e.g., “Guidelines for Military Manuals and Instructions on the Protection of the Envi-

ronment in Times of Armed Conflict,” International Review of the Red Cross 311 (1996): 230–37.134 As commonly acknowledged, written laws of war in ancient western Asia are unique to

Deuteronomy.135 As demonstrated in section III, fruit tree destruction nevertheless meant a radical impair-

ment of LSS. Deciding what is more extreme is the task of the interpreter. In Jewish tradition, thislaw has, in keeping with its underlying principle, been expanded to include all forms of wantondestruction and waste. See, e.g., b. Šabb. 140b; b. Qidd. 32a; b. B. Qam. 91b; Maimonides, ShemitaveYovel 5:3.

136 If Israelite armies are required to fight (and die) in order to conquer a city, then they may “put all the males to the sword.” Women, children, and animals, however, can only be takenas spoil. If the city accepts terms of surrender and opens its gates, absolutely no blood is to beshed; the inhabitants may, however, be subjected to forced labor.

137 Notice that the reason refers to “humans” (Md)h), which includes both groups of bel-ligerents. The translation of this clause has attracted the most attention from commentators onthese verses. Suffice it to quote Ibn Ezra’s interpretation: “In my opinion . . . this is the correctmeaning: that from (the trees) you get food, therefore do not cut them down, ‘for man is a tree of







bearing fruit) to be chopped down, although it places severe restrictions on eventhis action. In formulating these restrictions, v. 20 argues according to “necessity,”a principle central to Just War doctrine.138

The framers of these laws not only recommend restraint but also recognize theneed for written rules to guide military conduct in the heat of battle. We began thispaper by citing a letter from General Halleck to Sherman, a military commanderwho symbolizes unbridled destruction of LSS in modern warfare.139 Just two yearsbefore he sent this letter and in the same city where he wrote it, Abraham Lincolnintroduced a military code that demanded the humane, ethical treatment of pop-ulations in occupied areas and specifically banned the wanton destruction of prop-erty urged by Halleck and executed by Sherman.140 Such disregard of military conventions illustrates an abiding tension between law and praxis in times of war.One is reminded of Cicero’s observation: silent enim leges inter arma (“In the face

of arms laws fall silent”) (Pro T. Annio Milone 4.11). As the earliest survivingattempt to codify rules of war, and as a text that has inspired renewed attemptsboth to formulate and apply military conventions, Deuteronomy and its long his-tory of interpretation witness to the struggle to break this silence.141

the field,’ that is, our lives as human beings depend on trees. [. . .] And the evidence that this inter-pretation is correct is that it says ‘You shall cut them down and build siegeworks’” (ad loc.). Seealso the rabbinic dictum quoted in Sifre 203: Nly)h Nm )l) Nny) Md) l# wyyx (“Human life is notpossible without trees”).

138 Of course an intra-societal exchange on acceptable military conduct was carried on alsoin many other ancient societies: “Auch den Palmengärten gebührt nach gemeinsemitischem‘Völkerrecht’ besonderer Schutz; ein Feind, der ‘die Gärten niederhaut’, übertritt dessenungeschriebene Gesetze” (Leo Oppenheim, “Zur keilschriftlichen Omenliteratur,” Or 5 [1936]:

199–228, here 208). Diodorus (2.2) reports that it is commonly accepted among armies in Indiathat one must not harm farmers or cut down trees in war. For ancient Greece there are innumer-able witnesses, such as the f ifth book of Plato’s Republic, where Socrates demonstrates the neces-sity of a law sanctioning Hellenic armies that lay arable land to waste.

139 For Sherman, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war . . .deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out” (Letter from Maj. Gen. William T.Sherman, USA, to the Mayor and City Council of Atlanta, Sept. 12, 1864). Precisely this way of thinking and behaving reveals the necessity of written enforceable laws like those in Deuteron-omy.

140 This so-called Lieber Code is named after the jurist and political philosopher FrancisLieber.

141 Michael Walzer eloquently sums up the dilemma faced by war laws: “War is so awfulthat it makes us cynical about the possibility of restraint, and then it is so much worse that itmakes us indignant at the absence of restraint. Our cynicism testifies to the defectiveness of thewar convention, and our indignation to its reality and strength” ( Just and Unjust Wars, 46).




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