rve thee.

12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make
war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

13 _And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thy
hands_, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of
the sword:

14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and
all that is in the city, _even_ all the spoil thereof,
_shalt thou take unto thyself_; and thou shalt eat the spoil
of thy enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very
far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these
nations.

16 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy
God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive
nothing that breatheth.

The injunction to proclaim peace unto a city about to be attacked and
plundered strikes me as a particularly brilliant idea. When you go
to rob and murder a man, just tell him to keep cool and behave like a
gentleman and you won't do a thing to him but steal all his property and
cut his throat and retire in good order, God always seemed to fight on
the side of the man who would murder most of his fellow-men and degrade
the greatest number of women. He seemed, in fact, to rather insist on
this point if he was particular about nothing else. And, by the way,
if you had happened to live in one of those cities, what opinion do you
think you would have had of Jehovah? Would he have impressed you as a
loving Father? Here we have 2 Samuel v. 10, 12-13:

10 And David went on, and grew great, and the Lord God of
hosts was with him.

12 And David perceived that the Lord had established him
king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for
his people Israel's sake.

13 And David took him more concubines and wives out of
Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron: and there were yet
sons and daughters born to David.

The nearer he got to God--the more God was "with him," the more wives he
wanted. Next we have 2 Samuel xx. 3:

3 And David came to his house at Jerusalem, and the king
took the ten women, his concubines, whom he had left to keep
the house, and put them in ward, and fed them * * * * * So
they were shut up unto the day of their death, living in
widowhood.

Now what did David do that for? I don't know. It was such a trifling