When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the axe against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down (Deuteronomy 20:19).
Following these lines, at the end of the verse, is an ambiguous statement:
כִּי הָאָדָם עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה, לָבֹא מִפָּנֶיךָ בַּמָּצוֹר
At first glance, I would translate it this way:
Because the man is a tree of the field to come before you in the siege.
Others translate it differently:
Robert Alter: "For is the tree of the field a human, to come away from you in the siege?"
JPS: "Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?"
My grandmother's 1960 Menorah Press translation: "For is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee?"
Sapirstein/ArtScroll with Rashi's commentary: "Is, then, the tree of the field a man, that it should enter the siege before you?"
All the translations except my own read the sentence as a rhetorical question. In this respect, they all follow Rashi and therefore rest on good authority. Even so, this is an inference on the part of Rashi and other translators; it's not self-evident, because the original Hebrew text has no question marks.
Turns out I'm not entirely alone in my idiosyncratic reading. Apparently Ibn Ezra also refused to see in this sentence an interrogatory statement. And as Nehama Leibowitz points out, these alternative readings "reflect not only divergent grammatical approaches to the text. They inevitably lead to actual differences in meaning and implication." According to Rashi's interpretation, "the ordinance is inspired by compassion for whatever G-d has created." (What did that poor tree ever do to you?) But according to Ibn Ezra's interpretation, "the ordinance is motivated by considerations of human welfare." He understands "man is a tree of the field" to mean that man depends on the tree to sustain himself, or (as a rabbinic midrash puts it) the life of man is only from the tree. This is also consistent with the King James translation: "thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege." From this perspective, the ordinance is "designed to protect man from the wilful destruction of things from which he derives benefit" and--according to some rabbinical interpretations--prohibits any such destruction (not just fruit trees).
Interestingly, both interpretations provide some basis for the eco-kosher movement, though Ibn Ezra's reading admittedly provides a narrower one that rests on (enlightened) self-interest rather than the intrinsic value of nature. But even Ibn Ezra's reading subverts the worldview that C. B. Macpherson called possessive individualism. Nehama Leibowitz notes that the Torah's prohibition against the willful destruction of anything that benefits humanity trumps property rights: "it does not matter whether the object of our destructive efforts belongs to us.... Once man is allowed to rule himself and his property without let or hindrance, there is no knowing where it will lead him." (Actually, I think we know all too well.) And for Chabad rabbi Tzvi Freeman, "man is a tree of the field" emphasizes connectedness and mutual interdependence rather than (in Karl Marx's words) the "separation of man from man," the "individual withdrawn into himself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and separated from the community." For me, all of this gives new meaning to the maxim that the Torah is a tree of life.
