פרשת שופטים תשכ"ט - בל תשחית

כי תצור אל עיר ימים רבים, and you find it necessary to cut down the surrounding trees to erect ramparts from which to launch missiles, etc.

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 wielding an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, but thou shalt not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee?

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 wielding an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, but thou shalt not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee?

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 wielding an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, but thou shalt not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee?

כי האדם עץ השדה FOR IS THE TREE OF THE FIELD A MAN [THAT IT SHOULD BE BESIEGED BY THEE]? — כי has here the meaning of “possibly”, “perhaps” (cf. Rashi on Exodus 23:5) — is the tree of the field perhaps a man who is able to withdraw within the besieged city from before you, that it should be chastised by the suffering of famine and thirst like the inhabitants of the city? Why should you destroy it?

man is a tree of the field I have already explained, in Sefer Hayyǝsod , that in every language there is a tendency to omit words in order to be concise. Nevertheless, one never omits the word “not”, because then one’s meaning is reversed. A great Spanish grammarian asserted that the sentence is missing an interrogative heh , as if Scripture were asking rhetorically, “is a tree of the field a man?” — but in my view this interpretation is not correct, because it makes no sense to explain a prohibition against destroying a fruit tree, on the grounds that a tree is not a man (and is thus incapable of running away). In my opinion there is no need for any of this. The meaning, rather, is as follows: You may eat of them, but do not cut them down, for man is a tree of the field (i.e., the life of man depends on the trees of the field). A similar construction appears in “for it is taking a life in pawn” [24: 6], which clearly means “it is taking the means of a man’s livelihood in pawn”. The phrase but do not cut them down is conceptually tied to the phrase to come before you in the siege, to wit: You may not destroy fruit-bearing trees, which are a source of life to mankind, but you may eat of their fruit; you are forbidden to destroy them so that the besieged city will surrender before you. The subsequent phrase cut to build up siegeworks is proof that this is the correct interpretation.