commands enjoin the unconditional and universal destruction of the inhabitants or merely of the body politic? The word haram, to destroy, signifies national, as well as individual destruction, the destruction of political existence, equally with personal; of governmental organization, equally with the lives of the subjects.  Besides, if we interpret the words destroy, consume, overthrow, &c., to mean personal destruction, what meaning shall we give to the expressions, “throw out before thee;” “cast out before thee;” “expel,” “put out,” “dispossess,” &c., which are used in the same passages?  “I will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee” Ex. xxiii. 27.  Here “all thine enemies” were to turn their backs and “all the people” to be “destroyed.”  Does this mean that God would let all their enemies escape, but kill all their friends, or that he would first kill “all the people” and THEN make them “turn their backs,” an army of runaway corpses?  If these commands required the destruction of all the inhabitants, the Mosaic law was at war with itself, for directions as to the treatment of native residents form a large part of it.  See Lev. xix. 34; xxv. 35, 36; xx. 22.  Ex. xxiii. 9; xxii. 21; Deut. i. 16, 17; x. 17, 19, xxvii. 19.  We find, also that provision was made for them in the cities of refuge.  Num. xxxv. 15;—­the gleanings of the harvest and vintage were theirs, Lev. xix. 9, 10; xxiii. 22;—­the blessings of the Sabbath, Ex. xx. 10;—­the privilege of offering sacrifices secured, Lev. xxii. 18; and stated religious instruction provided for them, Deut. xxxi. 9, 12.  Now does this same law require the individual extermination of those whose lives and interests it thus protects?  These laws were given to the Israelites, long before they entered Canaan; and they must have inferred from them that a multitude of the inhabitants of the land were to continue in it, under their government.  Again Joshua was selected as the leader of Israel to execute God’s threatenings upon Canaan.  He had no discretionary power.  God’s commands were his official instructions.  Going beyond them would have been usurpation; refusing to carry them out rebellion and treason.  Saul was rejected from being king for disobeying god’s commands in a single instance.  Now, if God commanded the individual destruction of all the Canaanites.  Joshua disobeyed him in every instance.  For at his death, the Israelites still “dwelt among them,” and each nation is mentioned by name.  Judg. i. 5, and yet we are told that Joshua “left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses;” and that he “took all that land.”  Josh. xi. 15-22.  Also, that “there stood not a man of all their enemies before them.”  How can this be, if the command to destroy enjoined individual