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CHAPTER XXIII.

BALAAM.

THE encampments and progress of the Israelites, are now no longer the wanderings of a devoted people, doomed to die in the wilderness; but the bold, direct, and successful progress of a warlike nation, from conquest to conquest.

*A multitude so great, subsisting in a desert so long, in a manner so singular, could not but attract the notice of the surrounding nations, who must have been anxiously solicitous, which way their route was directed. Being arrived at the borders of the wilderness, contiguous to the country of the Amorites, but not imagining that any part of their inheritance was to be allotted on this side of Jordan, they petition Sihon, the king of the country, to grant them leave to pass peaceably through his territories. This he roughly refuses; and, without waiting to see whether Israel intended to attempt a passage by force, collects his whole strength, advances into

the wilderness to attack them, and thereby hastens his own destruction; his whole army is smitten with the edge of the sword, and his whole land falls an easy prey to the victors.

Og, king of Bashan, is rash enough to follow the example of Sihon, and is also subdued, and the fertile plains over which he reigns, swell the triumphs of Israel.

Advancing forward to Jordan, they pitch their tents in the plains of Moab. The Israelites had been expressly forbidden to disturb the Moabites, who were descended from Lot, the nephew of Abraham.

The report of the victories over Sihon and Og, it seems, had roused the attention and the jealousy of Balak, the king of Moab. Instead of employing the rational policy of courting alliance with a people so formidable, and who were not disposed to molest him, he had recourse to the mean, timid, and contemptible arts of necromancy or divination. For this purpose the elders of Moab, with the elders of also Midian, were sent to Aram, in the mountains of the East, with large money in their hands, styled the rewards of divination, unto Balaam, the son of

Bryant thinks Aram, should have been Adom, or Edom.

Bosor, a noted enchanter of those times, with

this message:

“Behold! there is a people come out of Egypt, behold! they cover the face of the earth, and they abide over against me. Come now over therefore, I pray thee, curse me this people, for they are too mighty for me; perudventure, I shall prevail that we may smite them, and that I may drive them out of the land; for I wot that he whom thou blessest, is blessed, and he whom thou cursest, is cursed.”

Herein God fulfilled the words of the oracle, pronounced in the song of Moses thirty-eight years before: Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed, the mighty men of Moab, trembling, shall take hold of them."

Balaam was a remarkable instance of a heathen being a prophet and a worshipper of the true God, as appears by his answer to the prinees of Moab: "Get ye into your land, for the Lord refuseth to give me leave to go with you.” In those early ages, the worship of God, and the worship of idols seem often to have been blended together. And it was, afterwards, often the case of Israel, that they served God a little, and Baal a little. And is it not so, with a great part of mankind, down to the present day.

But Balaam was not proof against importunity, when Balak sent to him a second time, by princes more honourable than the first, "promising to promote him to great honours. The Lord, who searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts, put Balaam's integrity and sincerity, on this occasion, to the test, in giving him a sign, as the condition on which he might go with the princes of Moab, and that was, their coming to call him in the morning. It does not appear that Balaam waited for this, but rose up in the morning, saddled his ass, and went with: them; by which it was manifest that he went greedily after rewards, and that he suffered his inclination to take the lead of duty.

Bishop Newton says: "He was a strange mixture of a man; but so is every man, more or less." There are inconsistences and contradictions in every character, though not so great, perhaps, and notorious as in Balaam's. He must have disregarded Divine counsel; for we read God's anger was kindled against him, because he went. His design might be to have recourse to soothsaying; a miracle, therefore, to confound his projects, might be as necessary, as when the magicians in Egypt opposed Moses and Aaron.

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The story of Balaam's ass, has been made the standing jest of infidels; but it may be asked, was the speaking of Balaam's ass, or the swallowing up of the magicians' rods, by that of Aaron, the greater miracle?

The apostle Peter says: " the dumb ass forbad the madness of the prophet." What could be more mortifying unto a prophet, than to be convinced of blindness by an ass,

and to be reproved of perverseness by the most untoward, and obstinate of all brute animals? When onedignified with the spirit of prophecy, runs counter to Divine direction, who would not expect some signal judgment to overtake such a person And could the Most High God have displayed his sovereignty in a more striking manner, than in thus controlling and getting himself dominion over all the arts and powers of soothsaying?

What a pitiful figure Balaam makes, when he says to the angel: "If it displeases thee, I will get myself back again!" The circumstances which Moses has recorded on the oc

x In Bryant's observations, it appears that the worship in Midian and Moab, was addressed principally to Baal Peor, to whom the ass was particularly sacred; that in the temple at Petor, this animal was represented as a type of the Deity; and that therefore the miracle was well adapted to humble the false prophet, and to enlighten the eyes of God's people.

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