And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
Ver. 15. Have ye saved all the women alive.] By whom ye have so lately sinned, and so lately suffered! "Keep thee far from an evil matter," Exo 23:7 Circa serpentis antrum positus, non eris diu illaesus, saith Isidore. We should take heed how we play about the hole of the asp, or near the den of the cockatrice. Isa 11:8 Sin and temptation come both under one name in the Lord's Prayer. To pray, "Lead us not into temptation," and yet to run upon the occasion of sin, is to thrust a finger into the fire, and then pray not to be burnt. These Israelites should have said to those Midianitish housewives, as those in Isaiah did to their idols, "Get you hence," Avaunt; they should have here been as cautous as they were in other cases. For being forbidden to make covenants with the Gentiles, they also abstained from drinking with them, because that was a ceremony used in striking of covenants, and so it might have drawn them on thereunto. Our dallying with the occasions of sin, doth usually tempt the devil to tempt us.