"... According to the herem law in the book of Deuteronomy, the berem applies to all seven pre-Israelite peoples anyway and the Israelites' vow to put to herem the Canaanites of Jericho and Arad and its environs is thus superfluous. It was the book of Deuteronomy which conceived the herem as a commandment which automatically applied to all the inhabitants of the land, whether they fought or not. This herem is not conditional on any vow or dedication; rather, it is from the beginning an a priori decree, which belongs more to the realm of utopian theory than to practice. Indeed, in practice, the inhabitants of the Canaanite cities were not destroyed but rather placed under corvee labor, as we learn from 1 Kings 9:20-21 ... The law of herem in Deuteronomy is then a utopian law which was written in retrospect. Deuteronomy adopted for itself the commandments of the old herem, which was practiced in encounters with the enemies and which was intertwined with a vow and with a dedication in proclaiming herem, but Deuteronomy applied it in the manner of his theoretical herem concerning all the pre-Israelite inhabitants. Furthermore, according to Deuteronomy not only the population which dwelled west of the Jordan were subject to the herem but also the Transjordan population (Deuteronomy 2:34; 3:10), which, according to the Deuteronomic view, is a part of the promised land ..."