“When you shall besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them; for you may eat of them. You shall not cut them down, for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged by you?”

Reading this verse in context

This page shows one verse on its own, which is rarely how it was written. Deuteronomy 20 contains 20 verses, and the sentences either side usually decide what this one means. Read the whole chapter before you quote it.

Text: World English Bible, Protestant edition (engwebp), eBible.org — public domain.