Quote Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh View Post
This is the normal condition of warfare. In our comfortable legalist and 'restrained' cultures we tend to forget that warfare boils down to:

Win.
Kill all of the enemy physically able to return to the fight.
Take all of their stuff.
Kill the elderly as a waste.
Take the children for your own property/Put babies into the women of the conquered.
Moreover, logically, this works better if you can get the drop on anyone around you so that they cannot do it to you first.

Any warfare that does not drop to this level is being attenuated by culture/ethics/etc.
That seems to be the baseline in the old Testament. They usually specify when they do worse. Like in Deuteronomy 2-3.

"4 At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed[c] them—men, women and children. We left no survivors. 35 But the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for ourselves."

[c] Deuteronomy 2:34 The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them.