Deuteronomy 20:19 When you shall besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it… It will be observed that this instruction is given to the Jews in the event of their going to war against any city. No question of mere horticulture arises in connection with this injunction. It is wantonness that is forbidden; it is not art that is decried. Trees that did not bear fruit were of course available for war, but trees that could be used for purposes of sustaining human life were to be regarded as in a sense sacred and inviolable. A prohibition of this kind is charged with lofty moral significance. When men go to war they are in hot blood; everything seems to go down before the determination to repulse the enemy and to establish a great victory. But here men in their keenest excitement are to discriminate between one thing and another, and are not to permit themselves to turn the exigencies of war into an excuse for wantonness or for the destruction of property that bears an intimate relation to human sustenance. Dropping all that is merely incidental in the instruction, the moral appeal to ourselves is perfect in completeness and dignity. Civilisation has turned human life into a daily war. We live in the midst of contentions, rivalries, oppositions, and fierce conflicts of every kind, and God puts down His law in the very midst of our life, and calls upon us to regulate everything by its sacredness. God has not left human life in a state of chaos; His boundaries are round about it; His written and unwritten laws constitute its restraints, its rewards, and its penalties; and even war in its most violent form is not to blind our eyes to the claims of God. Men say that all is fair in love and war, but this proverbial morality has no sanction in Holy Scripture. We are too apt to plead the exigency of circumstances in extenuation of acts that would not have otherwise been committed. It is evident that there are points in life at which circumstances must triumph or law must be maintained. Thus an appeal is made to reason and conscience nearly every day. When the human or the Divine must go down, the Christian ought to have no hesitation as to his choice. Victories maybe bought at too high a price. He who gives fruit-bearing trees in exchange for his triumphs may be said to have paid his soul for the prizes of this world. The young life, boastful of its energy, insists upon having its pleasures, cost what they may, and the old man is left to ruminate that in his youth he won his victories by cutting down his fruit trees. Two views may be taken of the circumstances and objects by which we are surrounded; the one is the highest view of their possible uses, and the other the low view which contents itself with immediate advantages. The wood of the fruit tree might be as useful as any other wood for keeping back an enemy or serving as a defence; but the fruit tree was never meant for that purpose, and to apply it in that direction is to oppose the intention of God. We are to look at the highest uses of all things — a fruit tree for fruit; a flower for beauty; a bird for music; a rock for building. Power and right are not co-equal terms. We have the power to cut down fruit trees, but not the right; we have the power to mislead the blind, but not the right; we have the power to prostitute our talents, but not the right. The right is often the more difficult course as to its process, but the difficulty of the process is forgotten in the heaven of its issue. To have the power of cutting down fruit trees is to have the power of inflicting great mischief upon society. A man may show great power in cutting down a fruit tree, but he may show still greater power in refusing to do so. The first power is merely physical, the second power is of the nature of God's omnipotence. Forbearance is often the last point of power. To love an enemy is to show greater strength than could possibly be shown by burning up himself and his house, and leaving nothing behind but the smoking ashes. There are times when even fruit trees are to be cut down. Perhaps this is hardly clear on the first putting of it. The meaning is that fruit tree may cease to be a fruit tree. When Jesus came to the fig tree and found on it nothing but leaves, He doomed it to perpetual barrenness, and it withered away. Even the husbandman pleaded that if the fruit tree did not bear fruit after one more trial it should be cut down as a cumberer of the ground. Fruit trees are not to be kept in the ground simply because in years long past they did bear fruit. Trees are only available according to the fruit which they bear today. "Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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: |
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