Texts in Conversation
Deuteronomy's limit on destroying fruit trees challenges the siege practice reported in the Ugaritic letter, protecting the food supply that people would need after the fighting.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 2.61:10
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
To Grdn, my lord, say: The son of Hrn, when he arrived […] he struck, the troops and […] the town. The grain on the threshing floors he burned; the vineyards too he destroyed. Our town is destroyed. So know it, know it.
Deuteronomy 20:19
Hebrew Bible
17 Instead you must utterly annihilate them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 18 so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God. 19 If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, you must not chop down its trees, for you may eat fruit from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it! 20 However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, and you may use it to build siege works against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.
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Notes and References
“... This destruction of food resources is implied by KTU 2.61, which seems to be a letter
from another settlement in the kingdom to the capital and reports:
When your messenger arrived, the army was humiliated and the city was sacked. Our
food in the threshing floors was burnt and the vineyards were also destroyed. Our city
is sacked. [...] For example, 2 Kings 3, 19: ‘You shall conquer every fortified town and every splendid city, you shall
fell every good tree and stop up every spring, and every fertile field you shall ruin with stones’. [...] Cf.
Deuteronomy 20, 19–20, which bans the destruction of fruit trees during a siege, or Tiglath-Pileser
III’s boast that he cut down all the gardens and orchards of Damascus when he besieged it in 733
BC (Tadmor 1994, 78, cited by Eph’al 2009, 52, see also 14–15). ...”
Boyes, Philip J.
Script and Society: The Social Context of Writing Practices in Late Bronze Age Ugarit
(p. 267) Oxbow Books, 2021
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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