“When you besiege a city for a long time by fighting against it to take it, you do not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. If you do eat of them, do not cut them down. For is the tree of the field a man to be besieged by you?
“It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wrong of these nations that יהוה your Elohim drives them out from before you, in order to establish the word which יהוה swore to your fathers, to Aḇ
know for certain that יהוה your Elohim shall no longer drive these nations out from before you. And they shall be snares and traps to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land which יהוה your Elohim has given you.