Remember the punishments he inflicted on the Ammonites; his vengeance was appalling.

He had them sawn asunder, cut them with harrows of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln.
"He was loyal, wholly devoted to the Lord, and just; but he committed the crime of adultery, and ordered the death of the husband he had betrayed.

What contradictions!" "To understand David," said the Abbe Plomb, "you must not think of him apart from his surroundings, nor take him out of the age in which he lived, otherwise you measure him by the ideas of our own time, and that is absurd.

In the Asiatic conception of royalty, adultery was almost permitted to a being whom his subjects regarded as superior to the common run of humanity; besides, women were then as a species of cattle belonging almost absolutely to him as the despot and supreme master.

It was but the exercise of his regal power, as has been plainly shown by Monsieur Dieulafoy in his study of that king.