Good Tactical Advice

Reading:   Deuteronomy 20

Here The Lord gives the Israelites (and all who conduct themselves in a siege) some sound advice...

DEUTERONOMY 20:19-20

19 When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege:  

20 Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued. 

Don't cut down the fruit trees in order to create means to assault the city (battering rams, ladders, etc).   It is better to protect the trees as a means to sustain life then to destroy them for a singular purpose.  It would be like slaughtering goats and then throwing them at the enemy - a waste of essential provisions!

We may live to want what we carelessly waste.  

-Matthew Henry-

Good tactical advice for war and for life!

~Kipling