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chapter that has struck my eye is the sixth of First
Samuel. In the nineteenth verse of that chapter, I
find the following:
"And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because
"they had looked into the ark of the Lord; even he
"smote of the people fifty thousand and three-score
"and ten men."
All this slaughter was because some people had
looked into a box that was carried upon a cart. Was
that cruel?
I find, also, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Second
Samuel, that David was moved by God to number
Israel and Judah. God put it into his heart to take
a census of his people, and thereupon David said to
Joab, the captain of his host:
"Go now through all the tribes of Israel, from
"Dan even to Beersheba, and number ye the people,
"that I may know the number of the people."
At the end of nine months and twenty days, Joab
gave the number of the people to the king, and
there were at that time, according to that census,
"eight hundred thousand valiant men that drew the
"sword," in Israel, and in Judah, "five hundred
"thousand men," making a total of thirteen hundred
thousand men of war. The moment this census was
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taken, the wrath of the Lord waxed hot against
David, and thereupon he sent a seer, by the name of
Gad, to David, and asked him to choose whether he
would have seven years of famine, or fly three
months before his enemies, or have three days of
pestilence. David concluded that as God was so
merciful as to give him a choice, he would be more
merciful than man, and he chose the pestilence.
Now, it must be remembered that the sin of taking
the census had not been committed by the people,
but by David himself, inspired by God, yet the
people were to be punished for David's sin. So,,
when David chose the pestilence, God immediately
killed "seventy thousand men, from Dan even to
"Beersheba."
"And when the angel stretched out his hand upon
"Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of
"the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the
"people, It is enough; stay now thine hand."
Was this cruel?
Why did a God of infinite mercy destroy seventy
thousand men? Why did he fill his land with widows
and orphans, because King David had taken the cen-
sus? If he wanted to kill anybody, why did he not
kill David? I will tell you why. Because at that
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time, the people were considered as the property of
the king. He killed the people precisely as he killed
the cattle. And yet, I am told that the Bible is not a
cruel book.
In the twenty-first chapter of Second Samuel, I
find that there were three years of famine in the days
of David, and that David inquired of the Lord the
reason of the famine; and the Lord told him that it
was because Saul had slain the Gibeonites. Why did
not God punish Saul instead of the people? And
David asked the Gibeonites how he should make
atonement, and the Gibeonites replied that they
wanted no silver nor gold, but they asked that seven
of the sons of Saul might be delivered unto them, so
that they could hang them before the Lord, in Gibeah.
And David agreed to the proposition, and thereupon
he delivered to the Gibeonites the two sons of Rizpah,
Saul's concubine, and the five sons of Michal, the
daughter of Saul, and the Gibeonites hanged all
seven of them together. And Rizpah, more tender
than them all, with a woman's heart of love kept
lonely vigil by the dead, "from the beginning of har-
"vest until water dropped upon them out of heaven,
"and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon
"them by day, nor the beast of the field by night."
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I want to know if the following, from the fifteenth
chapter of First Samuel, is inspired:
"Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I remember that
"which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for
"him in the way when he came up from Egypt. Now
"go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that
"they have, and spare them not, but slay both man
"and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep,
"camel and ass."
We must remember that those he was commanded
to slay had done nothing to Israel. It was something
done by their forefathers, hundreds of years before;
and yet they are commanded to slay the women and
children and even the animals, and to spare none.
It seems that Saul only partially carried into exe-
cution this merciful command of Jehovah. He spared
the life of the king. He "utterly destroyed all the
"people with the edge of the sword," but he kept
alive the best of the sheep and oxen and of the fat-
lings and lambs. Then God spake unto Samuel and
told him that he was very sorry he had made Saul
king, because he had not killed all the animals, and
because he had spared Agag; and Samuel asked
Saul: "What meaneth this bleating of sheep in mine
"ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?"
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Are stories like this calculated to make soldiers
merciful?
So I read in the sixth chapter of Joshua, the fate
of the city of Jericho: "And they utterly destroyed
"all that was in the city, both man and woman,
"young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the
"edge of the sword. And they burnt the city with
"fire, and all that was therein." But we are told that
one family was saved by Joshua, out of the general
destruction: "And Joshua saved Rahab, the harlot,
"alive, and her father's household, and all that she
"had." Was this fearful destruction an act of
mercy?
It seems that they saved the money of their
victims: "the silver and gold and the vessels of brass
"and of iron they put into the treasury of the house
"of the Lord."
After all this pillage and carnage, it appears
that there was a suspicion in Joshua's mind that
somebody was keeping back a part of the treasure.
Search was made, and a man by the name of Achan
admitted that he had sinned against the Lord, that he
had seen a Babylonish garment among the spoils, and
two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of
fifty shekels' weight, and that he took them and hid