16. But of the cities of these people, which the LORD your God does give you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes:
17. But you shall utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD your God has commanded you:
18. That they teach you not to do according to all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so that you should sin against the LORD your God.
19. When you shall besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy the trees thereof by wielding an ax against them: for you may eat of them, and you shall not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege:
20. Only the trees which you know will not be trees for food, you shall destroy and cut them down; and you shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it is subdued.