Deuteronomy: Chapter 20

To plant but not flower,

Promise but not have

Don't fall

consumed before consummation

Be like a tree

Heavy with fruit

[For full chapter, click here

From the protracted focus on "when you come in,"  we now turn around to "when you go out." After building the matrix of center, ways  and periphery, a unified "Israel," the nation can now move outwards to "cities very far from you" (20:15). But if the space within focuses on justice, and a concern for blood, the turn outwards shifts to the (brutal) laws of war.

Even as God promises to "be with you," there is a full awareness of danger. "The officers shall say to the army: 'Has anyone built a home and not yet dedicated it? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else dedicate in it.  Has anyone planted a vineyard and not yet eaten of it? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else eat it.  Has anyone betrothed a woman and not yet taken her? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else take her” (20: 6-8). Here, the greatest tragedy--the one thing that must be avoided--is non-consummation. Whether in human interrelations, or in relations to the earth, what has been prepared must be possessed; what is planted  must see fruition. 

The linkage of the human to the tree--the betrothed to the untasted vineyard--is sounded again at the closing of the chapter, where the army is warned against destroying fruit trees: "for man is the tree of the field." Though war creates an absolute break between human and human, the basal connection to the earth is maintained.]