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Andrew Gabriel Roth responds:
Actually I am not sure I even understand the question, but here goes: YHWH (Yahweh), though, makes a distinction between cities that are in the territory if Canaan/Israel to be conquered and those that are not. These instructions below are for cities that are NOT nearby:
Deuteronomy 20:10-15: 10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When YHWH your Elohim delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 THIS IS HOW YOU ARE TO TREAT ALL THE CITIES THAT ARE AT A DISTANCE FROM YOU AND DO NOT BELONG TO THENATIONS NEARBY.
Deuteronomy 20:16-17: But for other nations, THAT YHWH DIRECTLY NAMES, they have a different fate: 16 However, in the cities of the nations YHWH your Elohim is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them--THE HITTITES, THE AMORITES THE CANAANITES THE PERIZIIZITES, THE HIVITES AND JEBUSITES--as YHWH your Elohim has commanded you.
The question is WHY has YHWH commanded this? The answer is in the next few lines:
Deuteronomy 20:18-20: 18 Otherwise, THEY WILL TEACH YOU TO FOLLOW ALL THE DETESTABLE THINGS THEY DO IN WORSHIPPING THEIR GODS, and you will sin against YHWH your Elohim . 19 When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees of the field people, that you should besiege them? 20 However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.
In other words, the people who are in cities along the way but NOT in Israel proper can either surrender or fight. If the former, they will live. If not, they are destroyed. It can be situational because the tribes of Israel are not occupying their land.
BUT--for the places they DO occupy--like the Jebusites in Jerusalem for example--Israel risks falling into depravity when the locals say, "Welcome!
Here is how we have ALWAYS worshipped here..." and the "newcomers" then feel sheepish and go that way. They can trade with these folks, marry their beautiful women, and even enjoy pleasures of the flesh with temple prostitutes to be "righteous". In so doing, YHWH is not only offended, but His chosen nation of kohenim never arises and the world never is blessed through the seed of Abraham. Even Solomon had to deal with foreign wives practicing their "old time religion" first in Jerusalem and then "compromising" by allowing it outside the city but still in Israel's borders. This still legitimized the paganism and set Israel as a nation back for centuries to the point that not even Josiah and Hezekiah could stamp it out when they wanted to!
The difference between this herem or qorban (dedicated to destruction by YHWH) and the extremist Jihadi elements in Islam is this: At 1.5 billion people, Islam is NOT threatened with extinction of its ways and beliefs. By about 2025 it will be the dominant religion on Earth if present trends continue. Islam in fact was NEVER threatened with extinction from either Jewish or Christian quarters, but the inheritances of both Islam and Christianity from tanakh--regardless of imperfect interpretation, could never happen at all if the Hebrews themselves had turned and stayed pagan. THAT is why in this unique set of circumstances these tactics were allowed, but they are NOT allowed now.
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