This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[132]
After this, the Israelites grew effeminate as to fighting any more
against their enemies, but applied themselves to the cultivation of the
land, which producing them great plenty and riches, they neglected the
regular disposition of their settlement, and indulged themselves in luxury
and pleasures; nor were they any longer careful to hear the laws that belonged
to their political government: whereupon God was provoked to anger, and
put them in mind, first, how, contrary to his directions, they had spared
the Canaanites; and, after that, how those Canaanites, as opportunity served,
used them very barbarously. But the Israelites, though they were in heaviness
at these admonitions from God, yet were they still very unwilling to go
to war; and since they got large tributes from the Canaanites, and were
indisposed for taking pains by their luxury, they suffered their aristocracy
to be corrupted also, and did not ordain themselves a senate, nor any other
such magistrates as their laws had formerly required, but they were very
much given to cultivating their fields, in order to get wealth; which great
indolence of theirs brought a terrible sedition upon them, and they proceeded
so far as to fight one against another, from the following occasion: -
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.