Deuteronomy 20:19 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

The trees thereof, 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. Man's life, i.e. the sustenance or support of his life, as life is taken Deuteronomy 24:6. But this place may be otherwise translated, as it is in the margin of our English Bibles: For, O man, (the Hebrew letter he being here the note of a vocative case, as it is Psalms 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 Esther 9:1 Psalms 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 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 Isaiah 55:12; or such as grow only in open fields, such as are elsewhere called the trees of the wood, 1 Chronicles 16:33 Isaiah 7:2, or the trees of the forest, Song of Solomon 2:3 Isaiah 10:19, which are opposed to the trees of the gardens, Genesis 3:2,8 Ec 2:5 Ezekiel 31:9; as the flower of the field, Psalms 103:15 Isaiah 40:6, and the lilies of the field, Matthew 6:28, are opposed to those that grow in gardens, and are preserved and cultivated by the gardener's art and care. And so it is a very proper argument to dissuade from the destroying of fruit trees, because the wild and unfruitful trees were sufficient for the use of the siege. And this sense 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.