Seventh Reading — Deuteronomy 20:10–21:9
In the seventh reading (עליה, aliyah), Moses instructed that when the Israelites approached to attack a town, they were to offer it terms of peace, and if the town surrendered, then all the people of the town were to serve the Israelites as forced labor. But if the town did not surrender, then the Israelites were to lay siege to the town, and when God granted victory, kill all its men and take as booty the women, children, livestock, and everything else in the town. Those were the rules for towns that lay very far from Israel, but for the towns of the nations in the land — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites — the Israelites were to kill everyone, lest they lead the Israelites into doing all the abhorrent things that those nations had done for their gods. A closed portion (סתומה, setumah) ends here.
In the continuation of the reading, Moses instructed that when the Israelites besieged a city for a long time, they could eat the fruit of the city's trees, but they were not to cut down any trees that could yield food. The third open portion (פתוחה, petuchah) ends here with the end of chapter 20.
In the continuation of the reading, Moses taught that if, in the land, someone slain was found lying in the open, and the slayer could not be determined, then the elders and magistrates were to measure the distances from the corpse to the nearby towns. The elders of the nearest town were to take a heifer that had never worked down to an ever-flowing wadi and break its neck. The priests were to come forward, all the elders were to wash their hands over the heifer.
In the maftir (מפטיר) reading of Deuteronomy 21:7–9 that concludes the parshah, the elders were to declare that their hands did not shed the blood nor their eyes see it, and they were to ask God to absolve the Israelites, and not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among them, and God would absolve them of bloodguilt. Deuteronomy 21:9 concludes the final closed portion (סתומה, setumah).
Read more about this topic: Shoftim (parsha), Readings
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