CHAPTER XXIX.

The history of Balaam. His character. Sent for by Balak to curse the Israelites. The form of malediction pronounced by the ancient heathens preserved by Macrobius. Balaam yields to the importunities of the Moabites, and accompanies them to Balak's capital. The several events of the journey detailed. Balaam's acquaintance with the worship of God. Shown that he was a true prophet. Reflections on his mission.

BEFORE I proceed to consider in detail the prophecies of Balaam, which follow next in order among the poetical portions of the Pentateuch, it will not be out of place to say a few words upon the history and character of this remarkable man, who, whatever might have been the wickedness of his latter years, was no doubt in his younger, a worshipper, and unquestionably a prophet of the true God. His character was a singular compound of reverence towards the Deity, and rebellion against him, the one being the effect of fear, the other of a natural and dominant proneness to evil. The good which appears in Balaam's character was presumptive merely; it could not be ascertained but by the searcher of hearts; the evil was positive and open to the detection of the most superficial scrutiny. His heart was evidently wedded to the world; his apprehensions caused him to pay a reluctant and therefore a forced obedience to

the commands of that power which he knew was omnipotent, and which he consequently held in dread. His was no spontaneous obedience, no gratuitous reverence, but a slavish affiance, a devotion of which the exciting motives were terror and personal security; though the temptations of avarice at length led him to overleap all bounds of restraint, and to reap the terrible harvest of unrighteousness on the field of slaughter.

In their progress towards the land of promise, having vanquished Sihon, king of the Amorites, a warlike potentate, who had denied them a passage through his territories, and Og, the king of Bashan, a man of gigantic stature, whose bed measured fifteen feet four inches in length, of prodigious prowess, and the terror of all the neighbouring states, the Israelites reached the plains bounded by the river Jordan, near the eastern bank of which they encamped, opposite to Jericho, at that time a flourishing and populous city. Balak, king of the Moabites, a weak and superstitious prince, a worshipper of the obscene Chemosh, and consequently adespiser of the living God, terrified at their success over the petty sovereigns whom they had subdued in their protracted journey through the wilderness, and apprehensive for the safety of his own dominions, according to the practice of those and subsequent times, dispatched messengers to Balaam, a celebrated diviner, seer, or sorcerer of Mesopotamia, to invite his presence for the purpose of pronouncing a malediction upon theenemy who had approached his borders, flushed with conquest, and thus of preventing an unfavourable

issue to the Moabites of the threatened hostilities, by setting in array the host of heaven against these bold and menacing aggressors. Balak was terrified at the near prospect of yielding up his sovereignty, and perhaps his life, to a strange enemy, who seemed endued with a power which no mere human appliances could control, and therefore vainly persuaded himself that the sorceries of the renowned magician of Mesopotamia might be purchased to consign to utter extermination those hosts, now under the immediate protection and guidance of the Infinite and Almighty Jehovah.

A notion prevailed at this time and long subsequently, as may be sufficiently ascertained from heathen writers, especially Macrobius, that certain persons who practised the arts of sorcery, or of divination, possessed the power of visiting countries with various plagues, such as famine, pestilence, or the sword, letting loose upon them the withering blast of desolation, and on this account their aid was frequently solicited in cases of threatened peril from invading foes; their imprecations being considered a more complete and certain engine of extermination than the implements of war; magicians were consequently held in great veneration, and were frequently considered to possess powers of destruction or of blessing equal to the gods, of whom they were supposed to be the accredited agents. The maledictions of such men were thought sufficient to paralyze the strength of armies, and even to arrest the arm of omnipotence. They were presumed capable of winning

the tutelar deities, in whom the people to be anathematized were imagined especially to confide, to forsake the cause of their worshippers, and abandon them to certain discomfiture. It is no wonder, therefore, that they were held in such reverence, and their presence courted by princes and sovereigns.

Macrobius, a Latin writer of the fifth century, in his Saturnalia, lib. iii. chap. 9, has preserved the form of imprecation used upon such occasions. The following is an imprecatory obtestation to devote to immediate destruction the city of Carthage, which, it was imagined, had been abandoned by the tutelary deities. "Dis. Pater. Vejovis. Manes. or by whatever name you wish to be invoked, I pray you to fill this city of Carthage with fear and terror, and to put that army to flight which I mention, and which bears arms or darts against our legions and armies: and that ye may take away this army, those enemies, those men, their cities and their country, together with all who dwell in those places, regions, countries, or cities, and deprive them of the light above. Moreover, let all their armies, cities, country, chiefs, and people, be held by you consecrated and devoted according to those laws by which, and at what time, enemies can be most effectually devoted. I likewise give and devote them as vicarious sacrifices for myself and my magistracy; for the Roman people and for all our armies and legions; and for the whole empire, and that all the armies and legions which are employed in these countries, may be preserved in safety. If therefore ye will do these things, as I know, con

ceive, and intend, then he who makes this vow, wheresoever and whensoever he shall make it, I engage shall sacrifice three black sheep to thee, O mother earth, and to thee, O Jupiter!"

"When the execrator mentions the earth, he stoops down and places both his hands upon it; and when he names Jupiter, he elevates both his hands towards heaven; and when he refers to his vow, he places his hands upon his breast."

Balak, under the apprehension of immediate invasion by the armies of Israel, having deputed certain persons to wait upon the prophet of Pethor in Mesopotamia, commanded them to solicit his professional aid against the general enemies of Canaan, whom he was desirous should be subjected to the terrible ban of so potential a magician, for such Balaam was manifestly considered by the superstitious and cowardly sovereign of Moab. These functionaries took with them presents no doubt of considerable value, in order to induce a person of Balaam's high repute in those mysterious arts of which he assumed to be master, to perform the bidding of their king. Balaam, however, not daring to act contrary to the divine will, which he solemnly consulted upon this occasion, and which peremptorily forbade his cursing the Israelites; apprehending, moreover, the fearful issue of a pertinacious opposition to that will, he at once declined accompanying the envoys of Balak, who immediately returned to their master with an account of their unsuccessful embassy. This was a severe disappointment to the pusillanimous Moabite; nevertheless, supposing that the