Matthew Poole and continuators on Deuteronomy 20:19

19 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 ax against them, for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down ( for the tree of the field is mans life , to imploy them in the siege.

To wit, the fruit trees, as appears from the following words. Which is to be understood of a general destruction of them, not of the cutting down of some few of them, as the conveniency of the siege might require.

(i. e.) The sustenance or support of his life, as life is taken Deut. 24. 6. But this place may be otherwise translated, as it is in the Margent of our English Bibles: For, O man (the Hebrew letter He being here the note of a vocative case, as it is Psal. 9. 7.) the tree (or, trees, the singular number for the plural, as is common) of the field is (or ought, as the Hebrew Lamed is used Esth. 9. 1. Psal. 62. 10.) to be employed in the siege, or, as it is in the Hebrew, to go before thy face, i. e. to make fences for thy security, in the siege. The trees of the field, I here understand not in its general signification of all trees including fruit-bearing trees, as that phrase is commonly used, but in its more special and distinct signification, for unfruitful trees as it is taken Isa. 55. 1 2. or such as grow onely in open fields, such as are elsewhere called the trees of the wood, 1 Chron. 16. 33. Isa. 7. 2. or the trees of the forest, Cant. 2. 3. Isa. 10. 19. which are opposed to the trees of the gardens, Gen. 3. 2, 8. Eccl. 2. 5. Ezek. 31. 9. as the flower of the field, Psal. 103. 15. Isa. 40. 6. and the lilies of the field, Mat. 6. 28. are opposed to those that grow in Gardens, and are preserved and cultivated by the gardeners art and care. And so it is a very proper argument to disswade from the destroying of fruit-trees, because the wild and unfruitful trees were sufficient for the use of the siege. And this sence fitly agrees with the following words, where the concession or grant which here is delivered in more ambiguous terms of the tree of the field is repeated and explained concerning the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat.

Marginal references: Or, for, O man, the tree of the field is to be imployed in the siege.; Heb. to go from before thee.