In Numbers xxxi. we have one of the most horrible stories related even in the Bible, the story of the slaughter of the Midianites. Jahveh sent his tribes against this unhappy race, and, after their usual wicked fashion, they “slew all the males.” Moved, however, by an unwonted touch of pity, they “took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones,” and brought them alive back to their camp. Moses, Jahveh’s friend, “was wroth with the officers of the host” for their unworthy humanity, and shrieked out in his rage: “Have ye saved all the women alive?” And then he commanded them to “kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman” that had been married, “but all the women children that” were virgins “keep alive for yourselves.” This bloodthirsty and loathsome command is of “divine authority.” It is blasphemy to deny that it was god-given. Yet what of the blasphemy that ascribes an order so fiendish to “the God of the spirits of all flesh?” These baby boys and prattling children, kill every one; these mothers and matrons of Midian, murder them one after another. Such is the command of Jahveh, who said: “Thou shalt not kill.” And these fair and pure maidens, these helpless women-children, whose natural guardians ye have slain, keep these for the satisfactions of your passions. Such is the command of Jahveh, who said: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Some of these fair girls were claimed as “the Lord’s tribute,” 352 in all. These were handed over to the Levites, and small doubt can be felt as to their fate. To add a touch of the comic to this tragic scene, we learn that after all the fighting and the slaughter, not one solitary Israelite was missing, while the Midianitish nation, of which not a male was left alive, turns up again later as merrily as though it had never been destroyed, and “prevailed against Israel, and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strongholds” (Judges vi., 2). The book of Deuteronomy is awkward for the true believer, because it is a recital of the story related in the preceding book, and constantly contradicts the previous narrative. Thus Moses commands Israel to make no likeness or similitude of Jahveh on the ground that when he spake to them “out of the midst of the fire,” “ye heard the voice of the words but saw no similitude” (Deut. iv., 12); yet turning back we read that seventy-four of them “saw the god of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God” (Ex. xxiv., 10,11). It can scarcely be pretended that when they saw a visible being with “feet” and a “hand,” they “saw no similitude.”