Page:God Manifest.djvu/408

 various horrid sins and abominations, it is added, "Defile not yourself in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you, and the land is defiled: therefore, I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.—All these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled."

Thus, then, those Canaanitish nations were destroyed, like Sodom, on account of their wickedness. And that this was done, not as an act of vengeance, but for the good of the world, and especially to save the Israelites from being seduced into similar wickedness and idolatry, is also expressly declared: "When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations from before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee,—thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy sons from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you and destroy thee suddenly. But thus shall ye deal with them: ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut