From the book of the Wisdom of Solomon (a Deuterocanonical book) Chapter 12:3-11
12:3 The ancient inhabitants of your holy land
12:4 you hated for their loathsome practices, their acts of sorcery, and unholy rites.
12:5 Those ruthless murderers of children, those eaters of entrails at feasts of human flesh and of blood, those initiates of secret brotherhoods,
12:6 those murderous parents of defenceless beings, you determined to destroy at our ancestors’ hands,
12:7 so that this land, dearer to you than any other, might receive a worthy colony of God’s children.
12:8 Even so, since these were human, you treated them leniently, sending hornets as forerunners of your army, to exterminate them little by little.
12:9 Not that you were unable to hand the godless over to the upright in pitched battle or destroy them at once by savage beasts or one harsh word;
12:10 but, by carrying out your sentences gradually, you gave them a chance to repent, although you knew that they were inherently evil, innately wicked,
12:11 and fixed in their cast of mind; for they were a race accursed from the beginning. Nor was it from awe of anyone that you let their sins go unpunished.
Culled from the Good News Bible with Deuterocanonical Books