Deuteronomy 20:19
If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, you must not chop down its trees, for you may eat fruit from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it!
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Referenced Verses
- Deut 26:6 : 6 But the Egyptians mistreated and oppressed us, forcing us to do burdensome labor.
- Matt 3:10 : 10 Even now the ax is laid at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
- Matt 7:15-20 : 15 A Tree and Its Fruit“Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are voracious wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruit. Grapes are not gathered from thorns or figs from thistles, are they? 17 In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree is not able to bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree to bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So then, you will recognize them by their fruit.
- Matt 21:19 : 19 After noticing a fig tree by the road he went to it, but found nothing on it except leaves. He said to it,“Never again will there be fruit from you!” And the fig tree withered at once.
- Luke 13:7-9 : 7 So he said to the worker who tended the vineyard,‘For three years now, I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and each time I inspect it I find none. Cut it down! Why should it continue to deplete the soil?’ 8 But the worker answered him,‘Sir, leave it alone this year too, until I dig around it and put fertilizer on it. 9 Then if it bears fruit next year, very well, but if not, you can cut it down.’”
- John 15:2-8 : 2 He takes away every branch that does not bear fruit in me. He prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it will bear more fruit. 3 You are clean already because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me– and I in him– bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing. 6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and are burned up. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is honored by this, that you bear much fruit and show that you are my disciples.
Similar Verses (AI)
These verses are found using AI-powered semantic similarity based on meaning and context. Results may occasionally include unexpected connections.
- 89%
20 However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, and you may use it to build siege works against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.
- 73%
19 You will defeat every fortified city and every important city. You must chop down every productive tree, stop up all the springs, and cover all the cultivated land with stones.”
- 73%
23 The Produce of Fruit Trees“‘When you enter the land and plant any fruit tree, you must consider its fruit to be forbidden. Three years it will be forbidden to you; it must not be eaten.
- Deut 20:5-62 verses73%
5 Moreover, the officers are to say to the troops,“Who among you has built a new house and not dedicated it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else dedicate it.
6 Or who among you has planted a vineyard and not benefited from it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else benefit from it.
- Deut 20:10-189 verses72%
10 When you approach a city to wage war against it, offer it terms of peace.
11 If it accepts your terms and submits to you, all the people found in it will become your slaves.
12 If it does not accept terms of peace but makes war with you, then you are to lay siege to it.
13 The LORD your God will deliver it over to you and you must kill every single male by the sword.
14 However, the women, little children, cattle, and anything else in the city– all its plunder– you may take for yourselves as spoil. You may take from your enemies the plunder that the LORD your God has given you.
15 This is how you are to deal with all those cities located far from you, those that do not belong to these nearby nations.
16 Laws Concerning War with Canaanite Nations As for the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive.
17 Instead you must utterly annihilate them– the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites– just as the LORD your God has commanded you,
18 so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the LORD your God.
- 71%
20 When you beat your olive tree you must not repeat the procedure; the remaining olives belong to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow.
- 71%
10 They will not need to take wood from the field or cut down trees from the forests, because they will make fires with the weapons. They will take the loot from those who looted them and seize the plunder of those who plundered them, declares the Sovereign LORD.
- 71%
5 Suppose he goes with someone else to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose from the handle and strikes his fellow worker so hard that he dies. The person responsible may then flee to one of these cities to save himself.
- 71%
2 You must by all means destroy all the places where the nations you are about to dispossess worship their gods– on the high mountains and hills and under every leafy tree.
- Deut 16:20-212 verses70%
20 You must pursue justice alone so that you may live and inherit the land the LORD your God is giving you.
21 Examples of Legal Cases You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole near the altar of the LORD your God which you build for yourself.
- 70%
15 you must by all means slaughter the inhabitants of that city with the sword; annihilate with the sword everyone in it, as well as the livestock.
- 69%
17 They will eat up your crops and your food. They will kill off your sons and your daughters. They will eat up your sheep and your cattle. They will destroy your vines and your fig trees. Their weapons will batter down the fortified cities you trust in.
- Deut 28:39-402 verses69%
39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them.
40 You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe.
- 69%
51 They will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, or lambs of your flocks until they have destroyed you.
- 69%
14 For this reason no watered trees will grow so tall; their tops will not reach into the clouds, nor will the well-watered ones grow that high. For all of them have been appointed to die in the lower parts of the earth; they will be among mere mortals, with those who descend to the Pit.
- 69%
14 He cuts down cedars and acquires a cypress or an oak. He gets trees from the forest; he plants a cedar and the rain makes it grow.
- 69%
7 I will send men against it to destroy it with their axes and hatchets. They will hack up its fine cedar panels and columns and throw them into the fire.
- 68%
55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating(since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.
- 68%
10 Laws Concerning Wives When you go out to do battle with your enemies and the LORD your God allows you to prevail and you take prisoners,
- 68%
22 Egypt will run away, hissing like a snake, as the enemy comes marching up in force. They will come against her with axes as if they were woodsmen chopping down trees.
- 68%
9 He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and tear down your towers with his weapons.
- 68%
21 whose foliage was attractive and its fruit plentiful, and from which there was food available for all, under whose branches wild animals used to live, and in whose branches birds of the sky used to nest–
- 68%
42 Whirring locusts will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil.
- 68%
18 The whole hill country will be yours; though it is a forest, you can clear it and it will be entirely yours. You can conquer the Canaanites, though they have chariots with iron-rimmed wheels and are strong.”
- 68%
1 Laws Concerning Manslaughter When the LORD your God destroys the nations whose land he is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses,
- 68%
20 Your strength will be used up in vain, your land will not give its yield, and the trees of the land will not produce their fruit.
- 68%
25 When you go into the ripe grain fields of your neighbor you may pluck off the kernels with your hand, but you must not use a sickle on your neighbor’s ripe grain.
- 68%
3 For the religion of these people is worthless. They cut down a tree in the forest, and a craftsman makes it into an idol with his tools.
- 67%
5 They will cover the surface of the earth, so that you will be unable to see the ground. They will eat the remainder of what escaped– what is left over for you– from the hail, and they will eat every tree that grows for you from the field.
- 67%
9 Leaving the Gleanings“‘When you gather in the harvest of your land, you must not completely harvest the corner of your field, and you must not gather up the gleanings of your harvest.
- 67%
9 For Israel’s sake I destroyed the Amorites. They were as tall as cedars and as strong as oaks, but I destroyed the fruit on their branches and their roots in the ground.
- 67%
8 They will be like a tree planted near a stream whose roots spread out toward the water. It has nothing to fear when the heat comes. Its leaves are always green. It has no need to be concerned in a year of drought. It does not stop bearing fruit.
- 67%
25 They tore down the cities and each man threw a stone into every cultivated field until they were covered. They stopped up every spring and chopped down every productive tree. Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it.
- 67%
12 Its foliage was attractive and its fruit plentiful; on it there was food enough for all. Under it the wild animals used to seek shade, and in its branches the birds of the sky used to nest. All creatures used to feed themselves from it.
- 67%
8 The battle there was spread out over the whole area, and the forest consumed more soldiers than the sword devoured that day.
- 67%
10 “So the trees said to the fig tree,‘You come and be our king!’
- 67%
9 “‘Say to them: This is what the Sovereign LORD says:“‘Will it prosper? Will he not rip out its roots and cause its fruit to rot and wither? All its foliage will wither. No strong arm or large army will be needed to pull it out by its roots.
- 67%
5 They invade like lumberjacks swinging their axes in a thick forest.
- 67%
14 Laws Concerning Witnesses You must not encroach on your neighbor’s property, which will have been defined in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the LORD your God is giving you.