. The pictorial history of Palestine and the Holy land including a complete history of the Jews. reast. From thisaccount of the spoil, the Midianites appear tohave been a wealthy semi-pastoral people, and(as the ornaments seem to be those of the men)studious of splendour in their attire. Ear-rings do not appear to have been worn by menamong many of the more civilized nations ofantiquity, not, for instance, by the Egyptians;but among the sculptured antiquities of thatpeople several foreign nations are representedwith this ornament, as shown in the annexedengraving. When the victors returned wit
. The pictorial history of Palestine and the Holy land including a complete history of the Jews. reast. From thisaccount of the spoil, the Midianites appear tohave been a wealthy semi-pastoral people, and(as the ornaments seem to be those of the men)studious of splendour in their attire. Ear-rings do not appear to have been worn by menamong many of the more civilized nations ofantiquity, not, for instance, by the Egyptians;but among the sculptured antiquities of thatpeople several foreign nations are representedwith this ornament, as shown in the annexedengraving. When the victors returned with their cap-tives and spoil, Moses was very wroth that thewomen had been spared, seeing that they hadbeen the exciting cause of the recent calamitiesand sins. He therefore commanded that all of them should be slain excepting the young * .St. Paul says (1 t3or, x. 8) that twenty-Wire thousand died by the plague; and, as the original number is 24,000,it Ins been reasonal>ly conjectured that this is the full number, but that 1000 were slain by the judges, and the rest by the^)la^ [Ear-rings of Men.] Chap. VI] THE WANDERING. 325 virgins, who were to be kept as domestic slaves. All the male children he also ordered to be put to death. Infidelity has made a stand upon this conduct of Moses, as equally unjust and cruel. It may be answered that, when not acting under the Divine orders—and there is no mention of any command of God on this occasion—Moses was but a man, and liable as such to errors in policy and feeling, from passion or prejudice. The destruction of the very guilty women might be vindicated by such considerations of justice with respect to the past and of policy with reference to the future, as, we suspect, would have caused little hesitation in any of the chiefs of ancient nations, who rarely allowed any considerations to interfere with their views of policy ; but the slaughter of the unoffending male children is very difficult to justify, and no sati
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1844
