10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. [Good scheme!]
11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, _that_ all the people _that_ is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:
13 _And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thy hands_, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, _even_ all the spoil thereof, _shalt thou take unto thyself_; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thy enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16 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.
The injunction to proclaim peace unto a city about to be attacked and plundered strikes me as a particularly brilliant idea. When you go to rob and murder a man, just tell him to keep cool and behave like a gentleman and you won't do a thing to him but steal all his property and cut his throat and retire in good order, God always seemed to fight on the side of the man who would murder most of his fellow-men and degrade the greatest number of women. He seemed, in fact, to rather insist on this point if he was particular about nothing else. And, by the way, if you had happened to live in one of those cities, what opinion do you think you would have had of Jehovah? Would he have impressed you as a loving Father? Here we have 2 Samuel v. 10, 12-13:
10 And David went on, and grew great, and the Lord God of hosts was with him.
12 And David perceived that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for his people Israel's sake.
13 And David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron: and there were yet sons and daughters born to David.
The nearer he got to God--the more God was "with him," the more wives he wanted. Next we have 2 Samuel xx. 3: