and blended with the general, and as it were, natural progress of the providential administration of human affairs.

In this view, the punishment of the Canaanites by the sword of the Jews, rather than by any other means, seems a necessary part of the divine economy; and the event proves, that the rigour and extent of that punishment were not greater than the objects of that economy indispensably required; for if the dreadful example thus exhibited in all its terrors to the Jews, and imprinted, one would suppose, indelibly on their hearts, was yet insufficient to prevent them from yielding frequently to the seductions of idolatry, what must have been the result, had no such severity of discipline been employed? Assuredly the exclusive worship of Jehovah could not have been preserved beyond a single generation, or restored by a less signal or prolonged display of miracles, than that which was first employed to establish it. Now, either the total abolition of true religion, or its repeated restoration by such repeated and continued interruptions of the course of nature, and the regular tenor of the providential government of man, seem utterly inconsistent with the purposes of the divine dispensations.

The TREATMENT OF THE AMALEKITES has also been considered as a great difficulty. Much of what has been said as to the treatment of the Canaanites applies to it; but it has its particular circumstances, which it becomes necessary briefly to consider.

*

The first notice of the Amalekites is in Exodus, where it is said, "Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Re"phidim." Their miraculous defeat is there recorded, and the monument which Moses set up to preserve the memory of it, and the order of God concerning it. "And the Lord "said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, "and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly "put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. "And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it JEHOVAHNISSI; for he said, Because the Lord hath sworn, that the

*Exod. xvii. from 8 to the end.

"The Lord my banner." The next verse ought, as seems to me, to be translated, "For he said, Because the hand of the Lord shall be for ever upon the banners "of war against Amalek." This translation is justified, by changing "a throne," "into a banner;" the alteration was proposed by Houbigant, and seems prefer

"Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to genera"tion." But in the recapitulation of this history, Moses mentions the particulars, which prove this to have been an hostility on the part of the Amalekites totally unprovoked, and attended with very aggravating circumstances. "Remember," says he, "what Amalek did not unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; how He met † thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were "feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and HE FEARED NOT GOD. Therefore it shall be, when the Lord thy “God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, "in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inhe"ritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance "of Amalek from under heaven: thou shalt not forget it."

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Here then the Divine command to exterminate Amalek as a nation, is grounded, first, on their conduct towards the chosen people of God. They had displayed in their attack on them, a spirit of unprovoked, cruel, treacherous and inveterate hostility. It was unprovoked, because there appears no reason to believe that the Jews had the remotest intention of either injuring their persons or seizing on their territory; which does not appear to have formed any part of that land of which the Jews were commanded by God to take possession. Accordingly we never find the Amalekites mentioned among the nations who were to be expelled from the promised land. It was a cruel, treacherous and inveterate hostility, because they attacked the Jewish host, as appears, by surprise, so as to cut off the hindmost, who were feeble and weary and faint. And surely an enemy acting in such a manner as this, might at that time have been regarded as an inveterate and malignant foe, whose destruction might be considered as almost necessary to the safety of those whom they at

able to any other. Those readings, proposed by Le Clerc in locum, and by Shuckford, Vol. III. p. 31, seem, though ingenious not so natural. Vide Dodd's note on the passage.

* Deut. xxv. 17.

+ In 1 Samuel xv. 2. it is "how he laid wait for him in the way."

Vide Patrick on Exod. xvii. 8, and Deut. xxv. 17, &c. Universal History, Vol. I. p. 318. Most commentators consider these Amalekites as the descendants of Esau, who would therefore, but for their own misconduct have enjoyed the same exemption from all attempts of the Jews on their territory, as the children of Edom. Vide Deut, ii. 5. But this seems uncertain.

tacked. But this was not the chief cause of the doom denounced against them; it was not so much the cruelty of their conduct, as the impiety of their motive which drew down upon them the divine vengeance: 66 THEY FEARED NOT GOD." The Amalekites could not but have known the signs and wonders, by which Jehovah had rescued his chosen people from Egyptian slavery, and declared himself openly their guardian God. They must particularly have known the recent destruction of the Egyptian host in the Red Sea. But the Amalekites, notwithstanding all this, "feared not the God of the Jews." They set themselves voluntarily and audaciously in direct defiance of the power of Jehovah, and this at a period when this kind of opposition was peculiarly repugnant to the purposes of the divine dispensations. For we are informed, that "God led not his people through the "way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; "for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they “see war, and return to Egypt."* Under these circumstances, the unprovoked, inveterate and presumptuous attack of the Amalekites, must have been considered both by them and the Jews, as a direct insult to the majesty of Jehovah, in his character of peculiar guardian and immediate Lord of his chosen people. It was not consistent with the purposes of the divine economy to vindicate the honour of Jehovah by any general punishment of the Amalekites at that time: their attack was repelled, but not retaliated, nor was their territory invaded. This contemptuous defiance of the power and Majesty of God would therefore have appeared to escape with impunity, if no further notice had been taken of it; a circumstance which might have degraded the Deity in the estimation of the Jews, who judged of his power, as all other nations then judged of their guardian gods, by his vigour and promptitude in defending his people and punishing their enemies. This seems to be a reason why God judged it necessary to announce to the Jews, that though he would not at present punish the insult of the Amalekites, he yet would not suffer it to pass finally unpunished; but that he would authorize and employ them to inflict at a remote period, the punishment it merited; thus impressing the Jews themselves with the salutary conviction, that where the Majesty of

*Exod. xiii. 17.

Jehovah was insulted,* present_delay of punishment afforded no presumption of final impunity.

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In addition to this I would remark, that this sentence was a prophecy as well as a command, repeated afterwards by Balaam,† and in which the Jews were made the instruments of executing the will of their God, and supplied with a striking proof of the divine foreknowledge of their legislator: which being recalled to their remembrance 400 years after, when Saul was commanded to carry this sentence into execution, tended to impress upon them a salutary awe for the authority, and an humble obedience to the precepts, of the Mosaic Law; a lesson peculiarly necessary at the beginning of the regal government, which the people had called for from a certain degree of impatience under that theocracy which God by Moses had established; "When," says Samuel, "ye saw that Nahash the king "of the Children of Ammon came against you, ye said unto me, Nay, but a king shall reign over us; when the Lord your "God was your king. Now therefore, behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have desired; and behold, "the Lord hath set a king over you. If ye will fear the Lord, "and serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel against the "commandment of the Lord, then shall both ye, and also the king that reigneth over you, continue following the Lord your "God. But if ye will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel "against the commandment of the Lord, then shall the hand of "the Lord be against you, as it was against your fathers."‡ As the great criterion of this obedience, Samuel enjoins on Saul the execution of this command against the Amalekites. They had joined with his numerous and inveterate enemies to destroy him in the intancy of his reign; and the divine aid had given him a victory over the Philistines, and enabled him to extricate himself from his enemies on every side and now Samuel reminds him,|| "That God had anointed him king "over Israel," and informs him, that he in consequence required him to execute his judgments on Amalek. And that the Jews might feel they were acting merely as executioners of the divine sentence, and that the war was not undertaken or to be

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* Vide Butler's Analogy, Part I. ch. ii. p. 256. 1 Sam. xii. 12—15.

+ Numbers xxiv. 20.

|| 1 Sam. xv, 1, &c.

carried on from the common motives of conquest, they were forbidden to make any prisoners, or take any spoil. Saul violated this part of the command, saving the king of the Amalekites, and permitting the people to take of the spoil, under the pretence of offering it to God. But Samuel exposes the shallow pretext, for he said, “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings "and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, "to obey is better than sacrifice; and to hearken, than the fat "of rams for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stub"bornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast re'jected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from "being king." Thus the original sentence against the Amalekites, and still more its final execution, appears to have tended to impress powerfully upon the Jews, the necessity of obedience to the will, and awe for the majesty of Jehovah; and may therefore have formed a necessary link in the great series of the divine dispensations.

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This is the light in which this transaction strikes me. Other writers have observed,† and certainly with truth, that the apparent severity of this sentence is greatly diminished, when we consider that the Amalekites continued to manifest the most hostile disposition to the Hebrew nation, by attacking them whenever they had an opportunity, and joining their enemies upon all occasions to oppress and enslave them. They joined the Canaanites, and destroyed many of the people upon their first attempt to enter into Canaan; they,§ with the Moabites, went and smote Israel, dispossessed them of the city of Palmtrees, and helped to reduce them to an eighteen years' servitude: they also joined with the Midianites to oppress them, and utterly impoverished the Jews by their rapines and plunders, || destroying the increase of the earth, and leaving no sustenance for man or beast; and afterwards in conjunction with the Midianitish army, attacked them in battle. Under Saul's reign, they continued their ravages and violence; and when he had repulsed

*I Samuel, xii. ver. 22 and 23.

+ Vide Patrick on Exod. xvii. 8. and Deut. xxv. 17; also Poli Synopsis, and Dodd; vide also Maimonides More Nevochim, Pars III. cap. xli. p. 466; Leland's Answer to Tindal, Vol. II. p. 36; Chandler's Life of David, Vol. I. Book I. ch. iv.; and Lectures on the Old Testament, by Samuel Parker, sect. vii. p. 122.

Numbers, xiv. 45.

§ Judges, iii. 13 and 14.

|| Judges, vi. 3.