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chariots of Pharaoh which pursued the departing Hebrews. 
But we find in the 8th chapter that the Midianites brought 
into the field 135,000 men, and that of these 120,000 were 
slain. Similarly in the 12th chapter we find in the feud 
between Gilead and Ephraim, 42,000 of the latter more than 
the tribe amounted to according to the first numbering under 
Moses, and far more than given as the result of the second 
numbering — were massacred. Compare these with historical 
numbers. At the battle of Waterloo, where the forces of three 
great nations, with their auxiliaries, met in the field, the whole 
number engaged was not 175,000, inclusive of the 36,000 
under Blucher ; and the total loss, killed, wounded, and 
missing, amounted to about 23,000 on the side of the allies, 
and 37,000 on that of the French; 60,000 in all. Of these 
probably not one quarter were actually slain on the spot ; but 
reckoning them all as “ smitten/"’ the totalis only half of what 
the Midianites are said to have lost. In the massacre of the 
Huguenots, in 1572, the number put to death, in various parts 
of France, was, according to He Thou, about 30,000; five- 
sevenths of the number of Ephraimites stated to have been slain 
at one place and one time. I must add to my list of improbable 
massacres the thousand men said to have been slain by Samson 
at one time with the ass’s jawbone. Consider what a number of 
blows it would require to deprive a thousand men of life. Con- 
sider the time which the carnage would employ ; for, allowing 
but half a minute to each, it would take more than eight hours ; 
consider the effects of leaving a pile of 1,000 unburied bodies 
beneath a Syrian sun ! Happily in this passage we have a 
clue to the origin of the error. The poetical number, “ a 
thousand/’ used in Samson’s metrical song of victory, has 
evidently been permitted to take the place of the authentic 
number; but it no more means that 1,000 men were actually 
slain, than the song of the women after the slaughter of 
Goliath meant that myriads had fallen by the stripling’s hand. 
On the other hand, the Philistines gathered together to make 
sport over Samson in his captivity, do not seem exaggerated. 
The house, it is said, was full of men and women, and upon 
the roof were about 3,000. A gathering of 5,000 or 6,000 on 
such an occasion is far from improbable ; and the percentage 
killed by the fall of the edifice, though not so great as that 
which would express the effect of the fall of one of our 
cathedrals, would, doubtless, be high enough to justify the 
statement that Samson slew more in his death than in his 
life, which would hardly be the case if we are to take into 
consideration the thousand we have just been discussing, said 
to have been slain at Lehi. 
