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[39]
THE name of the Hebrews began already to be every where renowned,
and rumors about them ran abroad. This made the inhabitants of those countries
to be in no small fear. Accordingly they sent ambassadors to one another,
and exhorted one another to defend themselves, and to endeavor to destroy
these men. Those that induced the rest to do so, were such as inhabited
Gobolitis and Petra. They were called Amalekites, and were the most
warlike of the nations that lived thereabout; and whose kings exhorted
one another, and their neighbors, to go to this war against the Hebrews;
telling them that an army of strangers, and such a one as had run away
from slavery under the Egyptians, lay in wait to ruin them; which army
they were not, in common prudence and regard to their own safety, to overlook,
but to crush them before they gather strength, and come to be in prosperity:
and perhaps attack them first in a hostile manner, as presuming upon our
indolence in not attacking them before; and that we ought to avenge ourselves
of them for what they have done in the wilderness, but that this cannot
be so well done when they have once laid their hands on our cities and
our goods: that those who endeavor to crush a power in its first rise,
are wiser than those that endeavor to put a stop to its progress when it
is become formidable; for these last seem to be angry only at the flourishing
of others, but the former do not leave any room for their enemies to become
troublesome to them. After they had sent such embassages to the neighboring
nations, and among one another, they resolved to attack the Hebrews in
battle.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
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