When you draw near to a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it.
To offer terms of peace before besieging a city in an optional war
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כִּי־תִקְרַב אֶל־עִיר לְהִלָּחֵם עָלֶיהָ וְקָרָאתָ אֵלֶיהָ לְשָׁלוֹם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו המשפט שנתן לנו במלחמת שאר האומות והיא הנקראת מלחמת הרשות, וזה אנחנו נצטוינו כשנלחם עמהם שנבטיחם על נפשם לבד אם ישלימו עמנו ויתנו לנו הארצות ונחייבם לתת לנו מסים, ואין שומעין להם עד שיקבלו עליהם את הכל, והוא שיתנו דבר ידוע בכל שנה לפי מה שיגזור המלך שיהיה בעת ההיא, ושיהיו תחת ממשלתו משפילים עצמם ומקטינים, והוא ענין השעבוד, ואם לא ישלימו עמנו נצטוינו להרוג כל זכר הגדולים אשר במדינה ההיא ולקחת כל אשר להם והנשים, והוא אמרו אם לא תשלים עמך וגו'. וזהו כלו נכנס בגדר מלחמת הרשות. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בח' מסוטה ובב' מסנהדרין. (שופטים ושוטרים, מלכים פ"ו):
That is that He commanded us the law that He gave to us in a war with the other nations; and that is called an optional war. And we are commanded about this when we fight with them: That we promise them, only their lives, if they make peace with us and give us the land; and we obligate them to give us taxes. And we do not listen to them until they accept all of it upon themselves. And that is that they give us a set [amount] each year - according to that which the king decrees it should be at that time - that they be under his control, that they lower themselves and they humble themselves. And this is the content of subjugation. But if they don't make peace with us, we have been commanded to kill every male adult in that province and to take everything they have and the women. And that is His saying, "And if they do not make peace with you, etc." (Deuteronomy 20:12). And all of this comes under the definition of an optional war. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the eighth [chapter] of Sotah and the second [chapter] of Sanhedrin. (See Parashat Shoftim; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 6).
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a case law — "if X, then Y"
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding, with modification
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 1QM (War Scroll) reinterpreted it
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll) 62:5-9 The catalog describes this reception as: restated
Rabbinic aggadah
- Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:13 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 4.219-229 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.296 affirmed it
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 9:5-6 carried a parallel, with divergence
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- neo assyrian royal inscriptions Neo-Assyrian kings routinely demanded submission before siege, framing it as royal mercy — a shared diplomatic practice of pre-siege offers that Deuteronomy codifies as a legal obligation binding the Israelite king rather than leaving it to royal discretion Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Royal annals (Sennacherib's and Esarhaddon's campaign accounts describe pre-siege demands of surrender framed as royal mercy) Grayson and Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib (RINAP 3, 2012-2014); Leichty, The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon (RINAP 4, 2011)
- hittite vassal treaties Hittite diplomatic texts preserve formulae of submission governing vassal relations, illustrating the broader Late Bronze Age convention of diplomatic submission-or-conflict before military action; the parallel is general rather than a precise pre-siege ultimatum, and the Deuteronomic law uniquely transforms the offer of terms into a mandatory legal rule binding the king Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Preamble and stipulations (e.g., Treaty of Mursili II with Duppi-Teshub of Amurru) Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (SBL, 1999)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.