is means prevent
any injury to be done to those guests. When they no way abated of their
earnestness for the strange woman, but insisted absolutely on their
desires to have her, he entreated them not to perpetrate any such act of
injustice; but they proceeded to take her away by force, and indulging
still more the violence of their inclinations, they took the woman away
to their house, and when they had satisfied their lust upon her the
whole night, they let her go about daybreak. So she came to the place
where she had been entertained, under great affliction at what had
happened; and was very sorrowful upon occasion of what she had suffered,
and durst not look her husband in the face for shame, for she concluded
that he would never forgive her for what she had done; so she fell down,
and gave up the ghost: but her husband supposed that his wife was only
fast asleep, and, thinking nothing of a more melancholy nature had
happened, endeavored to raise her up, resolving to speak comfortably to
her, since she did not voluntarily expose herself to these men's lust,
but was forced away to their house; but as soon as he perceived she was
dead, he acted as prudently as the greatness of his misfortunes would
admit, and laid his dead wife upon the beast, and carried her home; and
cutting her, limb by limb, into twelve pieces, he sent them to every
tribe, and gave it in charge to those that carried them, to inform the
tribes of those that were the causes of his wife's death, and of the
violence they had offered to her.

9. Upon this the people were greatly disturbed at what they saw, and
at what they heard, as never having had the experience of such a thing
before; so they gathered themselves to Shiloh, out of a prodigious and
a just anger, and assembling in a great congregation before the
tabernacle, they immediately resolved to take arms, and to treat the
inhabitants of Gibeah as enemies; but the senate restrained them from
doing so, and persuaded them, that they ought not so hastily to make war
upon people of the same nation with them, before they discoursed them
by words concerning the accusation laid against them; it being part
of their law, that they should not bring an army against foreigners
themselves, when they appear to have been injurious, without sending an
ambassage first, and trying thereby whether they will repent or not: and
accordingly they exhorted them to do what they ought to do in obedience
to their laws, tha