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The difference between the Jews and other people is precisely this: — All the great nations that we read of have effected extensive and, on the whole, salutary conquests. Their triumphs have been the means of spreading law, government, civilisation, where they would otherwise not have reached. They have swept away feeble, corrupt, sensualised people, who had become animal worshippers or devil worshippers, and had lost all sense of their human dignity. But we feel that the nations who have done these works have done them in great part for their own glory, for the increase of their territory, at the instigation and for the gratification of particular leaders. All higher and more blessed results of their success, which it is impossible not to recognise, have been stained and corrupted by the ignoble and selfish tendencies which have mixed with them, and been the motives to them; so that we are continually perplexed with the question, what judgment we shall form of them, or what different causes we can find for such opposite effects. There is one nation which is taught from the very first that it is not to go out to win any prizes for itself, to bring home the silver or gold, the sheep or the oxen, the men servants or the women servants; that it is to be simply the instrument of the righteous Lord against those who were polluting His earth, and making it unfit for human habitation.

(F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

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KJV: But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

WEB: But of the cities of these peoples, that Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes;