“For you must devote them to complete destruction — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites — as the LORD your God has commanded you,”
Deuteronomy 20:17 (BSB)
Context Reading
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. 19When you lay siege to a city for an extended time while fighting against it to capture it, you must not destroy its trees by putting an axe to them, because you can eat their fruit. You must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field human, that you should besiege them?