1. see horse and chariot. As we are reminded elsewhere, especially in Exodus and Judges, chariots were the instruments of the great martial nations of the region, first the Egyptians and then the Canaanites, against whom the Israelites stood at a palpable disadvantage. In the early period of the conquest, the Israelites were mostly confined to the rocky high country of Canaan and often fought in what were essentially guerilla forces. This ancient equivalent of an armored corps could well have seemed terrifying to them. The allusion here to God’s bringing Israel up out of Egypt, as Jeffrey H. Tigay notes, is probably meant to recall the great victory over Pharaoh’s chariot corps at the Sea of Reeds.

troops. The collective noun ʿam, which has the more general meaning of “people,” regularly designates “troops” in military contexts.

3. Let your heart be not faint. Rashi translates these exhortations into vividly concrete battlefield terms: “Let your heart be not faint—from the neighing of horses. Do not fear—from the clanging of shields. And do not quake—from the sound of the horns. And do not dread—the sound of the battle-cries.” The “faint” heart is literally a “soft” heart in the Hebrew, but the obvious reference is to fear, not excessive compassion.

5. the overseers. These officials, shotrim, appear to be civilian authorities, empowered both to allow exemptions from military service and to appoint commanders (verse 9).

dedicated. The verb ḥanakh might refer to an actual ceremony of dedication, its fixed sense in later Hebrew usage, or might simply mean “to inaugurate,” “to initiate use.”

6. enjoyed it. The literal meaning of the Hebrew verb is “desacralize.” The law behind that linguistic usage is as follows: during the first three years after planting a vineyard, its use was forbidden, presumably because the vines were immature; in the fourth year, the product of the vineyard was considered “holy to the LORD”; in the fifth year, its sacral status was voided and its fruits could be enjoyed without hindrance.

7. and another man wed her. In all these identically couched statements, the idea that someone else would enjoy what the man had anticipated enjoying suggests that the rationale for all these military exemptions was humanitarian consideration of the soldiers.

8. and the overseers shall speak further. This final exemption is set off from the preceding three because the rationale is not humanitarian but pragmatic: the presence of a coward in the ranks could undermine the morale of those around him.

shake the heart. In keeping with the Hebrew idiom of a “soft” heart, the verb here literally means “melt,” but, again, the clear connotation is fear, not compassion.

10. peace. As the next verse makes clear, “peace” (shalom) here amounts to surrender.

13. all its males. As many commentators note, this would have to be adult males, for we are told in the next verse that the little ones are to be spared together with the women.

16. you shall let no breathing creature live. It is hard to find any mitigation for the ferocity of this injunction to total destruction. The rabbis reinterpreted it, seeking to show that it was almost never strictly applicable. Since the archaeological evidence suggests that the “ban” was never actually implemented, it seems to be the projection in legal imperative of a militant fantasy—but surely a dangerous fantasy.

19. its trees. The Hebrew uses a collective noun, in the singular.

20. Only a tree that you know is not a tree for eating. There may be an echo here of “the tree was good for eating” (Genesis 3:6), evoking the Garden world in which God provided all good things for human enjoyment, and prohibited the fruit of two of the trees. Destroying fruit trees is a despoliation of God’s natural gifts, and since the inhabitants of the besieged town would be economically dependent on the trees, it is a devastating blow against them for the foreseeable future. In fact, it was quite common in the ancient world to cut down the enemy’s fruit trees, either for the practical purpose of erecting siege-works or—as in some instances in which the Greeks destroyed olive groves—out of sheer spite.