rtly by warlike machines, partly by mines dug under ground,
and partly by building walls on the outsides. Some they starved out with
famine, and some they gained by other methods; and after all, he betook
himself to slay the women and the children, and thought he did not
act therein either barbarously or inhumanly; first, because they were
enemies whom he thus treated, and, in the next place, because it was
done by the command of God, whom it was dangerous not to obey. He also
took Agag, the enemies' king, captive,--the beauty and tallness of whose
body he admired so much, that he thought him worthy of preservation. Yet
was not this done however according to the will of God, but by giving
way to human passions, and suffering himself to be moved with an
unseasonable commiseration, in a point where it was not safe for him to
indulge it; for God hated the nation of the Amalekites to such a degree,
that he commanded Saul to have no pity on even those infants which we by
nature chiefly compassionate; but Saul preserved their king and governor
from the miseries which the Hebrews brought on the people, as if he
preferred the fine appearance of the enemy to the memory of what God had
sent him about. The multitude were also guilty, together with Saul; for
they spared the herds and the flocks, and took them for a prey, when
God had commanded they should not spare them. They also carried off with
them the rest of their wealth and riches; but if there were any thing
that was not worthy of regard, that they destroyed.

3. But when Saul had conquered all these Amalekites that reached from
Pelusium of Egypt to the Red Sea, he laid waste all the rest of the
enemy's country: but for the nation of the Shechemites, he did not touch
them, although they dwelt in the very middle of the country of Midian;
for before the battle, Saul had sent to them, and charged them to depart
thence, lest they should be partakers of the miseries of the Amalekites;
for he had a just occasion for saving them, since they were of the
kindred of Raguel, Moses's father-in-law.

4. Hereupon Saul returned home with joy, for the glorious things he
had done, and for the conquest of his enemies, as though he had not
neglected any thing which the prophet had enjoined him to do when he
was going to make war with the Amalekites, and as though he had exactly
observed all that he ought to have done. But God was grieved that the
king of the Amalekites was preserved alive, an