aid that you will in time be weary of our company,
and will then abuse us, and send us back to our parents, after an
ignominious manner." And they desired that they would excuse them in
their guarding against that danger. But the young men professed they
would give them any assurance they should desire; nor did they at all
contradict what they requested, so great was the passion they had for
them. "If then," said they, "this be your resolution, since you make use
of such customs and conduct of life as are entirely different from
all other men, [12] insomuch that your kinds of food are peculiar to
yourselves, and your kinds of drink not common to others, it will be
absolutely necessary, if you would have us for your wives, that you do
withal worship our gods. Nor can there be any other demonstration of the
kindness which you say you already have, and promise to have hereafter
to us, than this, that you worship the same gods that we do. For has
any one reason to complain, that now you are come into this country, you
should worship the proper gods of the same country? especially while our
gods are common to all men, and yours such as belong to nobody else but
yourselves." So they said they must either come into such methods of
divine worship as all others came into, or else they must look out for
another world, wherein they may live by themselves, according to their
own laws.

9. Now the young men were induced by the fondness they had for these
women to think they spake very well; so they gave themselves up to what
they persuaded them, and transgressed their own laws, and supposing
there were many gods, and resolving that they would sacrifice to them
according to the laws of that country which ordained them, they both
were delighted with their strange food, and went on to do every thing
that the women would have them do, though in contradiction to their own
laws; so far indeed that this transgression was already gone through the
whole army of the young men, and they fell into a sedition that was much
worse than the former, and into danger of the entire abolition of their
own institutions; for when once the youth had tasted of these strange
customs, they went with insatiable inclinations into them; and even
where some of the principal men were illustrious on account of the
virtues of their fathers, they also were corrupted together with the
rest.

10. Even Zimri, the head of the tribe of Simeon accompanied with Cozbi,
a M