Deuteronomy 20:1-9

Of War and Exemptions from Service in it

When Israel goes to war with a foe more numerous and having horses and chariots they shall not fear; Jehovah is with them (Deuteronomy 20:1). On the eve of the campaign a priest shall exhort the people (Deuteronomy 20:2-4). Officers shall discharge every man who has built a house and not dedicated it (Deuteronomy 20:5), or planted a vineyard but not completed the rites opening its fruits to common use (Deuteronomy 20:6), or betrothed a wife but not taken her (Deuteronomy 20:7); and all who are faint-hearted (Deuteronomy 20:8). This done captains shall be appointed (Deuteronomy 20:9). In the Sg. address except for Deuteronomy 20:2 a, where, however, LXX has Sg. and the Heb. Pl. is due to the attraction of the vbs in the priest's speech to the ranks, in which the Pl. address is natural.

Thus Steuern."s allotment of this part to his. Pl. author loses one of its reasons. His other, the use in Deuteronomy 20:2 of the peopleinstead of Israel, common in Sg. passages, is not relevant to a quotation which besides has not the usual Pl. phrase for fearing(see on Deuteronomy 1:29); while his suggestion that Deuteronomy 20:1 is borrowed from Deuteronomy 21:10; Deuteronomy 23:9 (10), and Deuteronomy 7:17 and so editorial, is ungrounded. It is more natural to take Deuteronomy 20:2 as secondary (so Berth. and Marti) because of the Plurals, because they repeat Deuteronomy 20:1, and because the priestappears in them alone (Berth.: from a time when there was no king but a high-priest in Israel). Yet even this is doubtful; for (as we have seen) the Pl. in Deuteronomy 20:2 ais accidental, while the presence of a priest at the opening of a campaign, attended by sacrifices and oracles, was to be expected, and is confirmed for the time of the Judges and early Monarchy by such passages as Judges 20:26; 1 Samuel 4:3 f., 1 Samuel 14:18 f., etc.

I see, therefore, no reason for doubting the unity and originality of the whole passage.

Exemptions from war-service are granted by most Asiatic powers, but their range varies much from time to time. In Palestine the Turks used to let an only son and widows" sons go free, and for a time every married man. Later service was obligatory upon all except Christians and the tent-dwelling Arabs (Baldensperger PEFQ, 1906, 18). Recently Christians have been obliged to serve.