around them, as all were idolaters; but God 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 pre-eminently so.  The 10th and 11th verses contain the general rule prescribing the method in which cities were to be summoned to surrender.  They were first to receive the offer of peace—­if it was accepted, the inhabitants became tributaries—­but if they came out against Israel in battle, the men were to be killed, and the woman and little ones saved alive.  The 15th verse restricts this lenient treatment to the inhabitants of the cities afar off.  The 16th directs as to the disposal of the inhabitants of the Canaanitish cities.  They were to save alive “nothing that breathed.”  The common mistake has been, in supposing that the command in the 15th verse refers to the whole system of directions preceding, commencing with the 10th, whereas it manifestly refers only to the inflictions specified in the 12th, 13th, and, 14th, making a distinction between those Canaanitish cities that fought, and the cities afar off that fought—­in one case destroying the males and females, and in the other, the males only.  The offer of peace, and the conditional preservation, were as really guarantied to Canaanitish cities as to others.  Their inhabitants were not to be exterminated unless they came out against Israel in battle.  Whatever be the import of the commands respecting the disposition to be made of the Canaanites, all admit the fact that the Israelites did not utterly exterminate them.  Now, if entire and unconditional extermination was the command of God, it was never obeyed by the Israelites, consequently the truth of God stood pledged to consign them to the same doom which he had pronounced upon the Canaanites, but which they had refused to visit upon them.  “If ye will not drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come to pass that * * I shall do unto you as I thought to do unto them.”  Num. xxxiii. 55, 56.  As the Israelites were not exterminated, we infer that God did not pronounce that doom upon them; and as he did pronounce upon them the same doom, whatever it was, which they should refuse to visit upon the Canaanites, it follows that the doom of unconditional extermination was not pronounced against the Canaanites.  But let us settle this question by the “law and the testimony.”  “There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel save the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon; all others they took in battle.  For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, that they should COME OUT AGAINST ISRAEL IN BATTLE, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no favor, but that he might destroy them, as the Lord commanded Moses.”