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[134]
So Saul promised to do what he was commanded; and supposing that
his obedience to God would be shown, not only in making war against the
Amalekites, but more fully in the readiness and quickness of his proceedings,
he made no delay, but immediately gathered together all his forces; and
when he had numbered them in Gilgal, he found them to be about four hundred
thousand of the Israelites, besides the tribe of Judah, for that tribe
contained by itself thirty thousand. Accordingly, Saul made an irruption
into the country of the Amalekites, and set many men in several parties
in ambush at the river, that so he might not only do them a mischief by
open fighting, but might fall upon them unexpectedly in the ways, and might
thereby compass them round about, and kill them. And when he had joined
battle with the enemy, he beat them; and pursuing them as they fled, he
destroyed them all. And when that undertaking had succeeded, according
as God had foretold, he set upon the cities of the Amalekites; he besieged
them, and took them by force, partly by warlike machines, partly by mines
dug under ground, and partly by building walls on the outsides. Some they
starved out with famine, and some they gained by other methods; and after
all, he betook himself to slay the women and the children, and thought
he did not act therein either barbarously or inhumanly; first, because
they were enemies whom he thus treated, and, in the next place, because
it was done by the command of God, whom it was dangerous not to obey. He
also took Agag, the enemies' king, captive, - the beauty and tallness of
whose body he admired so much, that he thought him worthy of preservation.
Yet was not this done however according to the will of God, but by giving
way to human passions, and suffering himself to be moved with an unseasonable
commiseration, in a point where it was not safe for him to indulge it;
for God hated the nation of the Amalekites to such a degree, that he commanded
Saul to have no pity on even those infants which we by nature chiefly compassionate;
but Saul preserved their king and governor from the miseries which the
Hebrews brought on the people, as if he preferred the fine appearance of
the enemy to the memory of what God had sent him about. The multitude were
also guilty, together with Saul; for they spared the herds and the flocks,
and took them for a prey, when God had commanded they should not spare
them. They also carried off with them the rest of their wealth and riches;
but if there were any thing that was not worthy of regard, that they destroyed.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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