hewed him in pieces, because in saving his life, Saul had violated God’s command.  This same Saul appears to have put the same construction on the command to destroy the inhabitants of Canaan, that is generally put upon it now.  We are told that he sought to slay the Gibeonites “in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah.”  God sent upon Israel a three years’ famine for it.  In assigning the reason, he says, “It is for Saul and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.”  When David inquired of them what atonement he should make, they say, “The man that consumed us, and that devised against us, that we should the destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel let seven of his sons be delivered,” &c. 2 Samuel xxii. 1-6.]

[Footnote B:  If the Canaanites were devoted by God to individual and unconditional extermination, to have employed them in the erection of the temple,—­what was it but the climax of impiety?  As well might they pollute its altars with swine’s flesh, or make their sons pass through the fire to Moloch.]

In 1 Sam. 30th chapter, we find the Amalekites at war again, marching an army into Israel, and sweeping every thing before them—­and all this in hardly more than twenty years after they had all been UTTERLY DESTROYED!

Deut. xx. 16, 17, will probably be quoted against the preceding view. “But of the cities of these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:  but thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perrizites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.”  We argue that this command to exterminate, did not include all the individuals of the Canaanitish nations, but only the inhabitants of the cities, (and even those conditionally,) for the following reasons.

I. Only the inhabitants of cities are specified,—­“of the cities of these people thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.”  The reasons for this wise discrimination were, no doubt, (1.) Cities then, as now, were pest-houses of vice—­they reeked with abominations little practiced in the country.  On this account, their influence would be far more perilous to the Israelites than that of the country. (2.) These cities were the centres of idolatry—­the residences of the priests, with their retinues of the baser sort.  There were their temples and altars, and idols, without number.  Even their buildings, streets, and public walks were so many visibilities of idolatry.  The reason assigned in the 18th verse for exterminating them, strengthens the idea,—­“that they teach you not to do after all the abominations which they have done unto their gods.”  This would be a reason for exterminating all the nations and individuals around them, as all were idolaters; but God permitted, and even commanded them, in certain cases, to spare the inhabitants.  Contact with any of them would be perilous—­with the inhabitants of the cities peculiarly, and of the Canaanitish cities preeminently so.