Corollary to the Olive Irony: When the Claim Says Home and the Axe Says Moab
Psalms 2:4
“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.”
King James Version (KJV)
Do not twist 2 Kings 3 into a blank check. Elisha’s word was a one-time judgment on Moab—land Israel was not claiming as the gift they would inhabit and eat from.
Thank you Sister for your commentary on my video and Blog
The Great Prophetic Irony of Israeli Forces Uprooting Olive Trees in the Occupied West Bank
@MariaBelieverInJesusChrist • Thank you for the video.
Deuteronomy 20:19 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.
The above verse given at the time of Moses (just before the Israelites entered the Promised Land), instructs the Israelites not to cut down food-producing fruit trees since human life depends on these resources.
Praise the Lord!
Thank you Sister for this astonishing comment.
My sister in Christ - Maria - comment struck me as astonishing and deserving of an even deeper study into the great irony and great prophetic significance of the IDF destroying the Olive Trees in the Occupied West Bank.
I immediately realized there is a tremendous CASE STUDY here to further this tremendous PROPHETIC IRONY of the IDF destroying the Olive Trees in the Occupied West Bank because of the major PARADOX of God also commanding all trees (including FRUIT Trees) to be destroyed. See 2 Kings 3 KJV. Even deeper I found the stark example in Judges 9 KJV.
The greater Irony that comes out of this study as inspired by commentary from the Body of Christ is the URSURPER the Husbandmen calling themselves ISRAEL but are not destroy the OLIVE TREES of who they consider the enemy and they do not realize that God has cursed them in doing so to the point they PROVE THEMSELVES as destroying land does NOT belong to them.
See the study:
While studying Maria's comment, I immediately sit down to study this deeply.
I went to Deuteronomy chapter 20 KJV. I realized there are several scriptures that are in stark contrast which gives us a powerful paradox and CASE STUDY.
First I began by having my customized AI Bible study tools find list key words here in Deuteronomy and harmonize from KJV concordances and then identify all those that are in context and harmonize and those that do not. I then used my blogs and video here as the source references to confine the research:
My refined search for essential background study Links:
Here is my blog and the associated video on the PROPHETIC IRONY of the IDF destroying the OLIVE TREES in the Occupied West Bank.
https://youtu.be/PHMI4D_1Gmo?si=H0UnbWNPULXWyKkm
https://www.thethirdheaventraveler.com/2026/09/the-great-prophetic-irony-of-israeli.html
Focus on the WHY pertaining to PARADOX from my study:
https://www.thethirdheaventraveler.com/2025/01/let-us-examine-ourselves-gospel-kjv.html
https://www.thethirdheaventraveler.com/2025/02/the-address-to-those-called-to-address.html
https://www.thethirdheaventraveler.com/2026/04/powerful-corollary-to-jacobs-name.html
The paradox is this.
Deuteronomy 20 is the law for your land—the city you take to live in and eat from. Spare the fruit trees. They are “man’s life.”
2 Kings 3 is the word for the enemy’s land—Moab, not to be settled. Fell every good tree. Ruin the food. Leave it barren.
The irony. In the discipline of the the KING JAMES Bible rightly divided:
If the ground is named the inheritance God gave, Deuteronomy 20 belongs to that claim. True Israel does not not treat an orchard on promised soil as the enemy Moab. When fruit-bearing olives are torn out on land called “ours by gift of God,” the husbandmen think its their home, but their action says it is NOT.
Destroying the fruit trees is NOT Moses' command it is Elisha's sentence on a foreign enemy land you call yours and holy...
Who may may claim to be “Israel?”
The name was not voted. It was spoken after Jacob wrestled all night with the Man at Peniel— Jesus Christ “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (Genesis 32:28).
“If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed” (Galatians 3:29). “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel” (Romans 9:6). Revelation 2:9 and 3:9 name the counterfeit: “them which say they are Jews, and are not.”
Judges 9 (KJV).
Jotham speaks. “The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us” (9:8). Olive, fig, and vine will not leave their fruit (9:9–13). The bramble takes the crown and offers fire (9:15). Abimelech cuts boughs and burns a thousand (9:48–49). A millstone breaks his skull (9:53).The Lord’s vineyard always purges the fakes.
The vineyard is His, not theirs. Isaiah 5: he looked for grapes and found wild grapes; the hedge comes down.
Matthew 21: the husbandmen beat the servants and kill the Son to seize the inheritance. The vineyard is taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits. The same morning He curses the fig with leaves and no fruit: “Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever” (Matthew 21:19).
John 15: every branch in Him that beareth not fruit He taketh away; the fruitful He purgeth. Revelation 14:19: the vine of the earth is cast into the winepress of wrath.True Israel is not the bramble with a title. It is those who wrestle, prevail, and bear: Philadelphia, the remnant, the saints who know His face. The Lord does not argue with fakes. He inspects fruit. The olive that keeps its fatness stays. The husbandmen who treat the Owner’s trees as Moab while crying “ours” are already in the parable—and the vineyard is still His to purge.
Additional Notes:
Key phrase in Deuteronomy 20:19 KJV: , 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.
The (fruit) tree is not a combatant and yet It is also clear in scripture God has commanded man to destroy the trees (fruit trees included) of the enemy:
2 Kings 3:19 (KJV) in Deuteronomy of the fruit tree is not a combatant and yet It is also clear in scripture God has commanded man to destroy the trees of the enemy:
2 Kings 3:19 (KJV)
And ye shall smite every fenced city, and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree, and stop all wells of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones.
2 Kings 3:25 (KJV)
…and they stopped all the wells of water, and felled all the good trees…“Every good tree” is the fruit-bearing tree. So God, through Elisha, tells Israel to do in Moab what Deuteronomy 20 forbids in a siege.
What is the difference and provide KJV ONLY to include old scholars of Henry, Gill, and Poole. KJV
The sentence “Do not treat a fruit tree as an enemy” is a fair summary of Deuteronomy 20:19. The KJV itself supplies the reason: the tree is not a combatant, and it is “man’s life.” Scripture then carries that same distinction—fruitful life versus barren destruction—into law, history, proverb, and the words of Christ.Deuteronomy 20:19–20 (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:
Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.
Harmonized in the KJV
1. Same idiom: a thing that sustains life must not be seized as if it were an enemy.
Deuteronomy 24:6: “No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man's life to pledge.” The millstone is not a person; it is called “life” because a man lives by it. The fruit tree is treated the same way.
studylight.org
2. Trees are food God appointed, not soldiers.
Genesis 1:29: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed… and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”
Leviticus 19:23–25 requires Israel, once in the land, to treat fruit trees as holy produce, not as timber. The siege law is the wartime form of the same rule.3. Wanton waste is forbidden; necessity is limited.
John 6:12: “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” Matthew Henry ties that word of Christ directly to this law. War may take what it must; it may not rage at what feeds life.
blueletterbible.org
4. Apparent tension resolved: 2 Kings 3:19, 25.
Elisha tells Israel they shall fell “every good tree” in Moab. That is not the standing rule of Deuteronomy 20. Deuteronomy 20 governs a siege of a city whose land Israel will occupy and eat from. 2 Kings 3 is a specific prophetic judgment on Moab: the land itself is to be ruined so that nation cannot rise again. One is restraint toward an inheritance; the other is a sentence against an enemy God has marked for devastation. The two do not cancel each other; they apply to different cases.5. Spiritual harmony: God wars against barrenness, not against fruit.
Matthew 3:10: “Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”
Luke 13:6–9: the barren fig is given time, then cut down if it still cumbers the ground.
John 15:2: the branch that bears no fruit is taken away; the fruitful branch is purged that it may bear more.
Matthew 21:19: the fig tree with leaves and no fruit is cursed.
Psalm 1:3 and Proverbs 11:30: the righteous man is a tree that yields fruit in season; “the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.”So the axe is not aimed at life. It is aimed at what pretends to life and yields none. A fruit tree in Deuteronomy 20 is not an enemy. A fruitless tree in the Gospels is judged as one.6. The same mercy toward a living inheritance.
2 Samuel 20:19: the wise woman of Abel asks Joab, “Why wilt thou swallow up the inheritance of the LORD?” A mother city is not to be treated as if it were only a military target. Deuteronomy 20:19 says the same of the orchard that feeds that city and the army outside it.
Matthew Henry on Deuteronomy 20:19–20
Henry notes that sieges then required much timber for rams and works, and that in the heat of war men forget the public good. Therefore God forbids using fruit trees as timber.
biblegateway.com
On the clause “for the tree of the field is man’s [life]”:
The ancient versions (Septuagint, Targums) read it as a question: “Is the tree of the field a man, that it should come against thee in the siege?” Henry’s comment: “Do not brutishly vent thy rage against the trees that can do thee no harm.” He still prefers the KJV sense as nearest the intent of the law.
blueletterbible.org
He draws three lessons:
God is a better friend to man than man is to himself. The law restrains us from destroying that which is our life and food. Our passions are the real enemies of our welfare.
Armies may not make what desolation they please. Military rage must be ruled by reason. War is destructive enough without making it worse than necessary. Generous spirits will be tender not only of men’s lives but of their livelihoods.
The Jews take it as a ban on all wilful waste: breaking vessels, tearing clothes, stopping wells, pulling down buildings, destroying meat. “Thou shalt not destroy.” Christ gathered the fragments that nothing be lost. Every creature of God is good; nothing is to be abused. We may live to want what we carelessly waste.
blueletterbible.org
John Gill on Deuteronomy 20:19–20
Verse 19.
“A long time” is “many days.” Jonathan’s Targum and Jarchi discuss how many days before a Sabbath a Gentile city may be besieged, and that peace is first proclaimed. The trees in view are those outside the city, in the besiegers’ power—fruit trees, because “thou mayest eat of them.” They must not be cut for bulwarks, batteries, or stone-casting engines; other trees will serve.
biblestudytools.com
On “the tree of the field is man's life”: Gill first takes the KJV sense—fruit supports life. Then he lists the other readings:
“The tree of the field is man” / “is man’s” (property)—which he rejects as a weak reason.
“Is the tree of the field a man?”—No. It did not cause the war and cannot hide in the city. Josephus says that if trees could speak they would protest the injury. Onkelos: “not as a man is the tree of the field, to come out against thee in a siege.” Jonathan: it cannot hide from you. Others in Aben Ezra: it cannot flee. To raise an axe against it as if it were an enemy is “ridiculous and weak.”
Aben Ezra himself agrees with the KJV.
Another proposal: “O man, of the trees of the field there are enough to bring before thee for a bulwark”—use the unfruitful ones.
Metaphorical: as the tree should bear fruit lest it be cut down, so should man (Matthew 3:10). Plutarch notes that worshippers of Osiris were forbidden to destroy garden trees.
biblestudytools.com
Verse 20.
Non-fruit trees may be known even out of season. They may be cut if that hurts the enemy or helps the siege—bulwarks, batteries, engines—until the city is subdued. Gill then gives the spiritual emblem: the axe is laid to fruitless trees; trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, laden with the fruits of righteousness, are preserved and not rooted up (Matthew 3:10; Isaiah 60:21; Matthew 15:13).
biblestudytools.com
Matthew Poole on Deuteronomy 20:19
“The trees thereof” means the fruit trees. The ban is against general destruction, not against cutting a few if the siege truly required it.
studylight.org
“Man’s life” means the support of life, as in Deuteronomy 24:6.Poole also records the KJV margin: “For, O man, the tree of the field is to be employed in the siege”—taking the Hebrew he as a vocative (“O man”), and “to go before thy face” as meaning to make fences for security. On that reading, “trees of the field” would mean wild, unfruitful trees of the wood or forest (Isaiah 55:12; 1 Chronicles 16:33; Song of Solomon 2:3), set over against garden trees. The argument would then be: spare the fruit trees because the wild trees are enough for the works. He says that sense fits verse 20, which explains the grant as applying only to “trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat.”
studylight.org
How the three meet
Henry, Gill, and Poole all keep the same practical command: do not fell food trees for siege-wood. They differ only on the grammar of the hard clause.
KJV / Henry / Gill (first sense) / Ibn Ezra: the tree is man’s life—food.
Ancient versions / Gill’s second sense / Henry’s “do not vent rage”: the tree is not a man; it is not your enemy.
Poole’s margin: use the field’s unfruitful trees; leave the fruit trees.
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