For pathless marsh and mountain cell
The peasant left his lowly shed:
The frightened flocks and herds were pent
Beneath the peel's rude battlement,
And maids and matrons dropped the tear
While ready warriors seized the spear;
... the watchman's eye
Dun wreaths of distant smoke can spy.”[95]
But the Israelite expedition was on a larger scale than any “warden raid,” and Eastern passions are fiercer and shriller than those sung by the Last Minstrel: the maids and matrons of the desert would shriek and wail instead of “dropping a tear.”
In this great raid of ancient times “the war was of God,” not, as at Laish, because God found for them helpless and easy victims, but because He helped them in a desperate struggle. When the fierce Israelite and Arab borderers joined battle, the issue was at first doubtful; and then “they cried to God, and He was entreated of them, because they put their trust in Him,” “and they were helped against” their enemies; “and the Hagrites were delivered into their hand, and all that were with them, and there fell many slain, because the war was of God”; “and they took away their cattle: of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty thousand, and of asses two thousand, and of slaves a hundred thousand.” “And they dwelt in their stead until the captivity.”