War & Worship
Deuteronomy 20:1–20 – Deuteronomy: Then You Shall Live
First Sunday in Lent – March 1, 2020 (am)
Have you ever been tempted to murder someone but wondered if it was allowed under the provisions of the Old Testament laws?
This has absolutely nothing to do with profession as the pastor of middle school and high school students, and everything to do with our text for today.
As we have mentioned often in this series, this portion of Deuteronomy is a further explanation and application of the ten commandments. “You shall not murder” is in the sixth of the ten commandments and it is this commandment that is being expounded upon in our chapter today.
These commandments were given by God to guide Israel in righteous living as they learned to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and mind and as they learned to love their neighbor as themselves.
As much as Deuteronomy is a book about living out these crucial commandments, it is also about entering the promised land. A land filled with other nations. Nations who were wicked in God’s eyes and deserving of complete destruction.
Israel was to be the instrument God used to carry out this destruction, they were to be the ones to take the lives of everything that breaths in the cities of the land, which means that they were to be the ones to murder God’s enemies.
How do you love God and love your neighbor as you take the lives of your enemies?
How does Israel remain faithful to who God is and who God has called them to be, as they engage the peoples inside and outside the promised land in warfare?
This morning’s text answers these questions as it teases out the implications of the sixth commandment “You shall not murder” – specifically as it pertains to warfare.
Before we get into our text for today, let’s consider from the outset if laws on warfare might have anything to do with us today. How many of us will actually be in a position where we must consider if killing someone or something is really breaking the sixth commandment? How many of us, as a matter of survival, will need to make the decision to end a life?
An initial answer to that question is found in Romans 8:13, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” My friends, the answer this morning, is all of us. We all must be willing to kill in the name of the Lord, and with his might, if we’re to going to survive.
1. A Blueprint for Battle
At first glance, this chapter appears to simply be a blueprint for how Israel is to go about fighting their wars. When taken simply as a blueprint for battle, the chapter falls neatly into three parts and these three parts flow from more general, big picture preparations for war – things you were to know and consider and do before every battle – to the more specific, details of war – like how you were to conduct yourself in battles with certain cities and with certain tactics. Let us look at the chapter and see this for ourselves.
When you go out to war
Our chapter begins with instructions pertaining to, “When you go out to war with your enemies.” Verse 1 lays out the general mindset Israel is to have as they go out to war. It is the mindset that no matter how strong the opposing nation might be, no matter how advanced their weaponry was, Israel was not to fear them. Why? Because God is with Israel. And He is the God who brought them up out of the land of Egypt.
And so we see from the outset that Israel’s approach to war was not to begin with sizing up the strength of their enemy, nor was it to begin with examining the capability of their own forces, rather, their approach to war was to begin with remembering their God, and who he is, and what he has done for them, and how his presence is with them in the battle.
This first section continues by instructing Israel on how they were to prepare for the battles they would surely have to fight as a nation. Having assembled all of the fighting men, the first order of business was to listen, and the first person to address the army, was the priest. It was the role of the priest to give the pre-battle speech. The speech that would summon their courage and bolster their strength as they prepared to go into battle. But unlike many pre-battle pep talks we see in the movies or hear about in history, the emphasis was not to be on who you were as a soldier, or on how well you’d been trained, or about who it was you were defending – rather the emphasis was on Who it was that went with them into battle. In short, the pre-battle pep talk was to go something like this: Do Not Fear – “God is with you, God will fight for you, and God will give you the Victory!”
Once the priest finished, it was the officers turn to address the army. Their job was to call out all those who were exempt from fighting. This list included those who had built a house but had not lived in it, those who had planted a vineyard but had not enjoyed it’s fruit, and those who had become engaged to a wife but had not married her. Once the men who fell into these categories had identified themselves and taken up their belongings and turned for home, the officers were to call out one last group that was exempt from the battle - anyone who was afraid, anyone who was fearful and faint hearted, they too were to go home – lest their fear spread among the ranks.
It was only after thinning out the ranks of the Israeli army with these exceptions, only after the army that would actually fight the battle remained, that the commanders of the army were to be chosen.
When you draw near to a city to fight against it
The second section of the chapter moves from the general preparations for war and for battle to the more specific instructions about what the army should do when it drew near to a city to fight against it. The first thing that mattered when the army drew near to a city was where the city was located. How the army would proceed depended entirely upon the city’s location, more specifically, it’s location with respect to the promised land.
For cities that were outside the promised land, those described in verse 15 as “very far from you” and “not cities of the nations here,” the Israelites were to begin by offering terms of peace. What happened next depended entire upon the response of those in that city. If they accepted the terms of peace, they were to be subjected to forced labor – and were to serve the nation of Israel from then on. But if the city rejected peace and made war with Israel, then Israel was to besiege it.
That is they were to use the military tactics typically employed for conquering cities of that time period. They were to cut down trees from the surrounding area and use them to build towers or ramps or ladders in order to get over the walls of the city, or build battering rams to break down the gates of the city, or use timbers for support beams as they tunneled into the city.[1]
Once the city was in their hands they were to kill only those who were responsible for the war – namely, the men – sparing the lives of the women, children, and livestock. And then they were to take everything that remained in the city as spoil and they were to enjoy it, knowing it was given to them by God’s own hand. As uncomfortable as we may be with this picture, it should be observed that when compared the practices of the day, the provisions show extraordinary restraint in the treatment of one’s enemies. Even the slaughtering of the males carries restraint as mercy is shown to those who were innocent of the decision to go to war and we’ll see later on the Deuteronomy goes so far as to give laws for the proper treatment of those taken in war.[2]
But for cities inside the promised land, there was to be a different set of procedures. These were the cities that God was giving to them as an inheritance, they were the cities of the Hitties and Amorites and Canaanites and Perizzites and Hivites and Jebusites. They were the cities of wicked nations, of people who had become an abomination before the Lord. They were the cities of those who burned their children as offerings and practiced divination and who were sorcerers and inquirers of the dead. And they did all of this out of devotion to their false and wicked gods. [3]
There was to be no offer of peace with these cities, no restraint in battling them, no survivors left at the end of the day, no spoil to be enjoyed. Rather, they were to devote them to complete destruction – killing everything that breathed, destroying all their alters, cutting down all their Asherim, and burning all their idols.[4]
Why? So that they might not teach Israel to do the abominable things they had done in the name of their gods, and so cause them to sin against the Lord.
When you besiege a city for a long time
Finally, we arrive at the third and most specific instruction for Israelite war. In the instances when Israel must besiege a city for a long time, they were not to destroy the orchards or groves surrounding the city they were besieging. They were only allowed to cut down trees that didn’t produce food in order to make their siege-works, their weapons of war.
That is the blueprint for Israelite battles. It’s clear enough. God is on your side. Here’s who belongs in the army. Here’s how you battle cities in the land and cities outside of the land. Here’s how you are to build your siege-works.
Clarity aside, there’s something odd about these instructions, isn’t there? There’s something unexpected. While a student of modern warfare could take away a few pointers from this chapter, I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would want this chapter handed to them as their instructions as they began the conquest of another nation, not to mention seven other nations who were, as Deuteronomy repeatedly says, are “mightier than yours.”
Let’s look at why this may be a less than ideal blueprint for battle.
A less than ideal blueprint for battle?
First, the chapter begins by saying, “When (not if, but when) you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own.” The assumption from the outset is that Israel’s army will exclusively be fighting battles against nations whose armies are, problem #1 – larger than their own, and problem #2 – more advanced than their own, with more advanced weapons – called chariots. This same scenario shows up in every Avengers movie, and so in reading this verse I was reminded of what the character Hawkeye says in “The Age of Ultron” – “The city is flying and we’re fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.”
While it isn’t unheard of in the history of warfare for smaller, less advanced armies to go to war against larger ones, nor is it unheard of for the underdogs to win such battles, that is, after all what the stuff of legends is made of, do such examples suggest that a nation embark on a military campaign where this is will be status quo? Where this will apply to every battle? It doesn’t really make sense.
And if that doesn’t make sense, neither do the exemptions given by the officers. Knowing they are fighting only larger and more advanced armies, it was the officers role to begin each campaign by thinning out their own ranks. And which soldiers would have been removed by the exemptions given, those about houses and vineyards and marriages? Who is it that is most likely to have just built a new home or planted a new vineyard or betrothed a new bride? Wouldn’t it have been the younger and more able bodied warriors from among them? Wouldn’t these exemptions cause them to lose some of their best fighters, and right before going up against larger and more advanced armies?
And if you were a military commander getting precise instructions on battle from God, through Moses – wouldn’t it be nice if he gave you a little more to go on than “don’t use apple trees to build your siege-works?”
Can’t you picture a commander in the army thinking, “God, as long as we’re you’re giving instructions on that level of detail, it sure would be nice to get your thoughts on what kind of weapons we should make or how it is we’re actually supposed to conquer these cities that are, and I’m quoting your words here, “great and fortified up to heaven,” and whose people are “great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?”[5]
While this passage does give a clear blueprint for future battles, there is also something odd, something antimilitaristic in these instructions for battle.
Why?
2. Trust God, not Tactics
There are times in life when we can become so concerned with our own goals, our own ambitions, our own dreams, that we forget the bigger reason for why we’re working for. In those times, we need someone who will stop us and remind us of the bigger picture, of the reasons and purpose of what we’re doing.
There is something bigger at stake in our passage too. Something more important than battle tactics. The apparent oddities of our passage point us towards it.
Do not be afraid
We see it right away as the first point our passage makes is that in the face of larger and more advanced armies, Israel was not to be afraid. This theme of not being afraid is a prominent one in our passage. Not only does our passage begin with it, it is built into the instructions for Israelite warfare, as the priest was to remind the soldiers before every battle to not be afraid. Not only that, it is one things that could exempt you from military service. Anyone who was afraid was to go home “lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own.”
It is that language of hearts melting that ought to remind us of something. It ought to remind us of the last time Israel was in this exact same spot. The spot of standing on the edge of the Jordan River, ready to enter the promised land to take it. Moses retells in Deuteronomy 1 what went down the last time they were here saying,
23 . . . I took twelve men from you, one man from each tribe. 24 And they turned and went up into the hill country, and came to the Valley of Eshcol and spied it out. 25 And they took in their hands some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us, and brought us word again and said, ‘It is a good land that the LORD our God is giving us.’
26 “Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. 27 And you murmured in your tents and said, ‘Because the LORD hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. 28 Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, “The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven. And besides, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.
The last time Israel had the opportunity to enter the land, they failed because they were overcome by fear. But there was something deeper than fear that hindered them, and we’ll see it if we keep reading:
29 Then I said to you, ‘Do not be in dread or afraid of them. 30 The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, 31 and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.’ 32 Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the LORD your God, 33 who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go.
The last time Israel was in this position, the problem was not faulty tactics, it was faulty faith. Moses shows us in Deuteronomy 1 the fear that kept Israel from going up into the promised land the last time was a symptom of something deeper – that something was unbelief. Moses calls the Israelites out on this point in Deuteronomy 1 where he exhorted them to put away their fear and to trust in the God who fights for them, as he has already done in Egypt and in the wilderness – yet in spite of this word, Moses says “they did not believe.” He doesn’t say, “they stayed afraid,” it says, “they did not believe.” They did not believe God was able to fight for them in a way that would defeat the intimidating inhabitants of the land.
So when we get to our passage today, a passage on the blueprint for battles, Moses begins by addressing the first and most important battle every Israelite must face if they are to be victorious, and that is the battle with unbelief.
But as is true of us, God does not ask his people for blind faith. This is not the first time God has shown up in Israel’s history. The command for Israel to trust him as they go into the promised land does not come in a vacuum. For HE IS THE LORD YOUR GOD. He is the God who has bound himself to Israel. He is the God of their ancestors, the God of the covenant, the God who has promised himself to be FOR Israel.
And he has been FOR them. For he is also the Lord WHO BROUGHT YOU UP OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT. This is not His first rodeo. Here is a God who has proven himself in battle against the best of the best. Against the mighty hand of Pharaoh and the Egyptian armies and the gods of Egypt and has won decisively – to the tune to complete and utter destruction of Israel’s enemies.
So when the priest was to say to the army before battle, “Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory,” there was no stronger word that could have been spoken to summon the courage of the Israelite forces. No greater truth, no better battle plan, than to look to believe that God was going with them to fight for them and to give them the victory.
And yet it still needed to be said at the beginning of every battle, for although the Israelites enemies were no match for them with God on their side, the enemy of unbelief was able to keep them from seeing this.
So we begin to see why this chapter is lacking in battle tactics. The Israelites didn’t need tactics, they needed to trust God. They didn’t need a better battle plan, they needed to believe in the God who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, to fight for them again, and give them the victory.
Enjoy the land
This idea that Israel needed to trust God more than they needed tactics continues to play itself out in the exemptions from battle. Yes, thinning out the army, especially of those who might have been the most able bodied warriors, would certainly create the need to trust God all the more, but there is more going on here than just that.
This land that Israel was fighting for was the promised land. After the sojourning of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. After 400 years in the land of Egypt. After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Israel was supposed to be in their forever home. This land was a gift promised by God. It was their inheritance. It was the land where they were supposed to build their own permanent homes and live in them. It was where they were supposed to plant their own vineyards and enjoy their own fruit. It was where they were to be able to take a wife and start a family and not have to wonder when they might be on the move again. Homes and fields and families ARE the blessing of God’s promise land. They are the gifts of God’s inheritance.[6] This IS what they were fighting for. And to exempt those who had not enjoyed them from service was to communicate this truth to Israel – these wars become pointless if you aren’t going to enjoy the land you’re being given. So in multiple instances, enjoyment of the land is given precedence over fighting for the land.
And this too required trust in the Lord. Standing before a superior army requires one to trust in the Lord, but so does leaving your comrades to fight in your place. How hard must it have been for those men who loved their country and their comrades, to lay down their arms and head for home. To know that their friends were risking their lives, while you enjoyed your new home, or new vineyard, or new wife? And yet the laws on warfare required it.
Perhaps it’s because unbelief shows itself in more forms than just fear. Israel needed to be reminded to not fear before their battles but they also needed to be reminded to enjoy the land they were conquering in the midst of the fight. Perhaps unbelief is not only found in fear, it’s also found in self-sufficiency, in the idea that we are needed to accomplish God’s plans, and in the refusal to enjoy God’s gifts until a date that has been set by us. Perhaps unbelief was rooted in the idea that this land needed to be taken, and not simply received. If so, these provisions for who is exempt from the battle were to remind Israel that this land was first and foremost a gift, and it needed to be enjoyed as such.
It is this same rational that is behind statements such as “you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you” and “you shall not destroy its trees.”[7] It is also behind the command to devote the inhabitants of Cannaan to complete destruction. It is all for the sake of the enjoyment of the land. To not enjoy the spoil of one’s enemies would be a refusal of the gifts God was giving them. To cut down the fruit trees in the zeal of battle would be to destroy the very gifts God was giving them in the land. And to refrain from utterly destroying the wicked nations who lived in the land would be to risk loss of the land itself, as the land was conditional upon obedience and the practices of these nations posed the greatest danger of leading them into disobedience and sin against God.
And so at every turn in this passage we see the emphasis is less about tactics and more about trust. Less on battle plans and more about belief. Less about how to conquer the land, and more about how to enjoy it. Less about War, and more about Worship and how to remain in a right relationship with the God who Promises and then delivers what was promised.
So what might it have to teach us about our lives today?
3. Fighting New Battles With Old Truths
To connect the dots between Deuteronomy and today, we must ask if we are fighting any battles that correlate to the battles Israel was fighting. When we see the instruction in Deuteronomy 20 as laws for the wars that must be waged to attain and keep the inheritance of the promised land, our questions is narrowed to ask – what is the Christian’s inheritance? What is our promised land? And are there wars we must fight in order to attain this inheritance?
Scripture is clear that the Christian, just like the Israelite, has been promised an inheritance. The Christian’s inheritance, like that of the Israelite, is an inheritance of land – of promised land – a land filled with blessing and grace and the presence of the Lord. Ephesians 1:11 tells us that it is in Christ that “we have obtained an inheritance . . . .” Ephesians 1:14 explains that the Holy Spirit is given to every Christian as, “the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.” And 1 Peter 1:4 describes this inheritance as “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you”
The inheritance of the Christian is the promised land of the Kingdom of God, the Heavenly kingdom that has already broken into history through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Christian’s fight for this kingdom is very similar to Israel’s fight for their land, for what stands between us and the possession of this inheritance are some very formidable foes, namely, sin and death. If we’re to overcome these foes, we must fight, and if we’re to fight properly, we need to know the laws that ought to govern our warfare. These laws can be taken directly from Deuteronomy 20.
So what do we learn from Deuteronomy 20 that will help us overcome our enemies of sin and death, and help us to enter and remain in our heavenly promised land? The first law is this - Your battle is first and foremost with unbelief. Unbelief, a lack of faith, a failure to trust God, that is what will keep you from entering the land.
From Deuteronomy, we see the two ways we must fight the battle against unbelief. First, we fight unbelief by knowing and believing who God is for us. We are told that Jesus Christ has a name, Immanuel, God with us. Immanuel shows up all over our passage today. The truth that God was with Israel in their battles has been made all the more emphatically in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God with us.
Furthermore, the God who is with us is still the God of the Exodus. He’s still the God who conquered the most powerful nation, and king, and gods of Israel’s day – but to that he has added to his resume the cross. He is the God who has conquered sin and death. He did so by sending his son, by giving his son, to fight and win this battle for us. This ought to strike confidence in the soul of the Christian as we face our own fight with sin and death as we remember the words of Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
To this we must add the understanding that God has promised to give victory to his people. He promised it in Deuteronomy 20 and he promises it to us today saying, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (Romans 8:33-37).
Second, we battle unbelief by enjoying our inheritance now, even before we gain full possession of it. Our fight against sin can’t take precedence over enjoyment of our savior. Enjoyment of the good gifts of the Kingdom of God must not wait until we’ve overcome sin and death. We must be defined by what we’re for, not just what we’re against. So we must be people who delight in the Word of God, in the fellowship of the church, in the sharing of our faith. W must be people who get baptized even as we continue to struggle with sin, for the blessing of God’s forgiving grace need not wait until the war is over. We must worship and enjoy worshipping our God even as we continue the war. And we must learn to resist the abominations of our land, not just out of a white knuckled resolve to not sin, by delighting in the love of God.
To end our time this morning, let’s consider the question we began with: How many of us, as a matter of survival, will need to make the decision to end a life? The answer at the end of the day, is that we all must be willing to kill if we’re going to take possession of the land that has been promised to us. “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). We must be willing to kill our flesh. To take our own lives, in the strength of the Lord, and give them up, not as another tactic, but as an expression of our trust in God.
Work Cited
Craigie P. C. The Book of Deuteronomy. William b. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand
Rapids, 1976.
Walton, John H., Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas. The Bible Background
Commentary: Old Testament. IVP Academic: Downers Grove, 2000.
Wright, Christopher J. H. Deuteronomy. Baker Books: Grand Rapids, 1996.
[1] Walton, 193; Craigie, 277.
[2] Deut. 21:10-14
[3] See Deut. 7; 9:4, 18:9-14
[4] Deut. 7:5
[5] Deut. 9:1
[6] This point is clear when we see among the curses for disobedience at the end of Deuteronomy: You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit. (Duet 28:30) They are clearly blessings, in that their opposites are curses.
[7] “Enjoy/consume” in v. 14 is literally “eat” with the sense of “enjoy” – we see in ch. 8:7-10 how the idea of eating signifies partaking of the blessing God has bestowed upon them.