"Blessed be the Lord, my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight" (Ps. cxliv, 1). The Old Testament is largely a record of wars and massacres. God is represented as "a man of war." At his command whole nations are exterminated. "Ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, ... and ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein" (Num. xxxiii, 52, 53). "And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them" (Deut. vii, 16). "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" (Deut. xx, 16, 17). "And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.... And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles with fire" (Num. xxxi, 7-10). Moses is angry because the women and children have been saved, and from this fiendish conqueror comes the mandate: "Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man." The mourning remnants of twenty thousand families are thus to be destroyed. The fathers, far away, lie still in death beside the smouldering ruins of their once fair homes; and now their wives and little ones are doomed to die. The signal is sounded, and the massacre begins. The mothers, on bended knees, with tearful eyes and pleading lips, are ruthlessly cut down. Their prattling babes, in unsuspecting innocence, smile on the uplifted sword as if it were a glittering toy, and the next moment feel it speeding through their little frames. The daughters only are spared--spared to be the wretched slaves of those whose hands are red with the life-blood of their dear ones. And this is but a prelude to the sanguinary scenes that are to follow. "Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon; behold I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land: begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle. This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee." "And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city, we left none to remain" (Deut. ii, 24, 25, 34).