A special characteristic of the Deuteronomic Law is its tenderness and care for animals as well as for the poor, ‘the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.’[251] Even the Egyptian is not to be ‘abhorred’ (Deut. xxiii. 7), and all Hebrew slaves are to be released every seventh year. Along with this, however, we find the ferocity which distinguished the Semites in time of war. If the enemy lived afar off, all the males of a vanquished city were to be mercilessly slain, and the children and women spared, only to become the slaves and concubines of the conquerors. But even this amount of mercy was forbidden in the case of the Canaanitish cities; here the massacre was to be universal, lest the Israelites should take wives from the conquered population and fall away from the worship of Yahveh. A similar spirit of ferocity breathes through the Assyrian inscriptions, where the kings boast of the multitudes of the vanquished whom they had tortured and slain in honour of their god Assur. Alone of the ancient nations of the East the Egyptians seem to have understood what we mean by humanity in war. Like the poor, the Levite is commended to the care and support of the people. He has no land or property of his own—much less a ‘Levitical city,’—the Lord alone ‘is his inheritance,’ and consequently those who remember the Levite remember at the same time the Lord whom he serves. The portion of the offering is defined which is to be the due of the Levites, and tithe is to be paid to them upon all the produce of the land. No distinction is drawn in the book of Deuteronomy between the Levites and the priests, ‘the sons of Aaron,’ and therefore the laws relating to the Levites apply to all the priests alike.