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[141]
When this was done, Joab sent messengers to the king, and ordered
them to tell him that he did what he could to take the city soon; but that,
as they made an assault on the wall, they had been forced to retire with
great loss; and bade them, if they saw the king was angry at it, to add
this, that Uriah was slain also. When the king had heard this of the messengers,
he took it heinously, and said that they did wrong when they assaulted
the wall, whereas they ought, by undermining and other stratagems of war,
to endeavor the taking of rite city, especially when they had before their
eyes the example of Abimelech, the son of Gideon, who would needs take
the tower in Thebes by force, and was killed by a large stone thrown at
him by an old woman; and although he was a man of great prowess, he died
ignominiously by the dangerous manner of his assault: that they should
remember this accident, and not come near the enemy's wall, for that the
best method of making war with success was to call to mind the accidents
of former wars, and what good or bad success had attended them in the like
dangerous cases, that so they might imitate the one, and avoid the other.
But when the king was in this disposition, the messenger told him that
Uriah was slain also; whereupon he was pacified. So he bade the messenger
go back to Joab and tell him that this misfortune is no other than what
is common among mankind, and that such is the nature, and such the accidents
of war, insomuch that sometimes the enemy will have success therein, and
sometimes others; but that he ordered him to go on still in his care about
the siege, that no ill accident might befall him in it hereafter; that
they should raise bulwarks and use machines in besieging the city; and
when they have gotten it, to overturn its very foundations, and to destroy
all those that are in it. Accordingly the messenger carried the king's
message with which he was charged, and made haste to Joab. But Bathsheba,
the wife of Uriah, when she was informed of the death of her husband, mourned
for his death many days; and when her mourning was over, and the tears
which she shed for Uriah were dried up, the king took her to wife presently;
and a son was born to him by her.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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