“However, in the cities of the nations that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not leave alive anything that breathes.”
Deuteronomy 20:16 (BSB)
Context Reading
14But the women, children, livestock, and whatever else is in the city — all its spoil — you may take as plunder, and you shall use the spoil of your enemies that the LORD your God gives you. 15This is how you are to treat all the cities that are far away from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. 16However, in the cities of the nations that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not leave alive anything that breathes. 17For you must devote them to complete destruction — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites — as the LORD your God has commanded you, 18so that they cannot teach you to do all the detestable things they do for their gods, and so cause you to sin against the LORD your God.