objection was sufficient to weigh down every other consideration: still what regard had they for conscience when they could de- liberately contrive a plan for murdering the whole city ? This was indeed to " strain at a gnat, and to swallow a camel."]
2. Profaneness —
[They knew that both the prince and his people were altogether ignorant of Jehovah, and destitute of the smallest wish to be interested in the Covenant which God had made with Abraham: and yet they proposed that all the males should receive the seal of God's covenant in circumcision ; and that too, not in order to obtain any spiritual benefit, but solely with a view to carnal gratification. What a profanation was this of God's holy ordinance ! and what impiety was there in recommending to them such a method of attaining their ends !]
3. Cruelty —
[One would scarcely have conceived that such cruelty could have existed in the human heart. That a spirit of revenge should excite in the minds of these men the thought of murdering the person who was more immediately impli- cated in the offence, was possible enough : but that it should prompt them to involve a multitude of innocent persons in the same ruin ; and at a time when those persons were making very great sacrifices in order to conciliate their favour ; and that it should induce them to make use of religion as a cloak for the more easy accomplishment of their execrable purpose ; this almost exceeds belief : yet such was their inhuman plot, which too successfully they carried into effect. And though their brethren did not join them in destroying the lives of any, yet they so far participated in the crime, as to take captive the defenceless women, and to seize upon all the cattle and property for a prey.]
There is nothing so iniquitous, but the perpetrators of it will justify it. This appears from,
III. Their vindication of their conduct —
In their answer to their father's reproof we behold nothing but,
1. Offended pride —
[They would not have felt any displeasure against She- chem, if he had dealt with any other female, or any number of them, as harlots ; but that he shoidd offer such an indignity to " their sister," this was the offence, an offence that could not be expiated by any thing less than the blood of all that were even in the most distant way connected with him. We are surprised and shocked at the relation of this event : and yet