, well deserves our consideration; and
gives us a substantial reason for the great concern that was ever shown
under the law of Moses to preserve the Israelites from idolatry, and
in the worship of the true God; it being of no less consequence than,
Whether God's people should be governed by the holy laws of the
true God, or by the impure laws derived from demons, under the pagan
idolatry.

[13] The mistake in all Josephus's copies, Greek and Latin which have
here fourteen thousand instead of twenty-four thousand, is so flagrant,
that our very learned editors, Bernard and Hudson, have put the latter
number directly into the text. I choose rather to put it in brackets.

[14] The slaughter of all the Midianite women that had prostituted
themselves to the lewd Israelites, and the preservation of those that
had not been guilty therein; the last of which were no fewer than
thirty-two thousand, both here and Numbers 31:15-17, 35, 40, 46, and
both by the particular command of God; are highly remarkable, and
show that, even in nations otherwise for their wickedness doomed to
destruction, the innocent were sometimes particularly and providentially
taken care of, and delivered from that destruction; which directly
implies, that it was the wickedness of the nations of Canaan, and
nothing else, that occasioned their excision. See Genesis 15;16; 1
Samuel 15:18, 33; Apost. Constit. B. VIII. ch. 12. p. 402. In the
first of which places, the reason of the delay of the punishment of the
Amorites is given, because "their iniquity was not yet full." In
the secured, Saul is ordered to go and "destroy the sinners, the
Amalekites;" plainly implying that they were therefore to be destroyed,
because they were sinners, and not otherwise. In the third, the reason
is given why king Agag was not to be spared, viz. because of his former
cruelty: "As thy sword hath made the [Hebrew] women childless, so shall
thy mother be made childless among women by the Hebrews." In the last
place, the apostles, or their amanuensis Clement, gave this reason for
the necessity of the coming of Christ, that "men had formerly perverted
both the positive law, and that of nature; and had cast out of their
mind the memory of the Flood, the burning of Sodom, the plagues of the
Egyptians, and the slaughter of the inhabitants of Palestine," as signs
of the most amazing impenitence and insensibility, under the punishments
of horrid wickedness.

[15] Josephus here, in this