THE MATTER OF BAAL-PEOR
Num 24:10-25; Num 25:1-18
THE last oracle of Balaam, as we have it, ventures into far more
explicit predictions than the others, and passes beyond the range of
Hebrew history. Its chief value for the Israelites lay in what was
taken to be a Messianic prophecy contained in it, and various bold
denunciations of their enemies. Whether the language can bear the
important meanings thus found in it is a matter of considerable
doubt. On the whole, it appears best not to make over-much of the
prescience of this mashal, especially as we cannot be sure that we
have it in the original form. One fact may be given to prove this.
In Jer 48:45, an oracle regarding Moab embodies various fragments of
the Book of Numbers, and one clause seems to be a quotation from Num
24:17. In Numbers the reading is, "and break down, all the sons of
tumult"; in Jeremiah it is, "and the crown of the head of the sons
of tumult" The resemblance leaves little doubt of the derivation of
the one expression from the other, and at the same time shows
diversity in the text.
The earlier deliverances of Balaam had disappointed the king of
Moab; the third kindled his anger. It was intolerable that one
called to curse his enemies should bless them again and again.
Balaam would do well to get him back to his own place. That Jehovah
of whom he spake had kept him from honour. If he delayed he might
find himself in peril. But the diviner did not retire. The word that
had come to him should be spoken. He reminded Balak of the terms on
which he had begun his auguries, and, perhaps to embitter Moab
against Israel, persisted in advertising Balak "what this people
should do to his people in the latter days."
The opening was again a vaunt of his high authority as a seer, one
who knew the knowledge of Shaddai. Then, with ambiguous forms of
speech covering the indistinctness of his outlook, he spoke of one
whom he saw far away, in imagination, not reality, a personage
bright and powerful, who should rise star-like out of Jacob, bearing
the sceptre of Israel, who should smite through the corners of Moab
and break down the sons of tumult. Over Edom and Seir he should
triumph, and his dominion should extend to the city which had become
the last refuge of a hostile people. Of spiritual power and right
there is not a trace in this prediction. It is unquestionably the
military vigour of Israel gathered up into the headship of some
powerful king Balaam sees on the horizon of his field of view. But
he anticipates with no uncertainty that Moab shall be attacked and
broken, and that the victorious leader shall even penetrate to the
fastnesses of Edom and reduce them. A people like Israel, with so
great vitality, would not be content to have jealous enemies upon
its very borders, and Balak is urged to regard them with more hatred
and fear than he has yet shown.
The view that this prophecy "finds its preliminary fulfilment in
David, in whom the kingdom was established, and by whose victories
the power of Moab and Edom was broken, but its final and complete
fulfilment only in Christ," is supported by the unanimous belief of
the Jews, and has been adopted by the Christian Church. Yet it must
be allowed that the victories of David did not break the power of
Moab and Edom, for these peoples are found again and again, after
his time, in hostile attitude to Israel. And it is not to the
purpose to say that in Christ the kingdom reaches perfection, that
He destroys the enemies of Israel. Nor is there an argument for the
Messianic reference worth considering in the fact that the
pseudo-Messiah in the reign of Hadrian styled himself Bar-cochba,
son of the star. A pretender to Messiah-ship might snatch at any
title likely to secure for him popular support; his choice of a name
proves only the common belief of the Jews, and that was very
ignorant, very far from spiritual. There is indeed more force in the
notion that the star by which the wise men of the East were guided
to Bethlehem is somehow related to this prophecy. Yet that also is
too imaginative. The oracle of Balaam refers to the virility and
prospective dominance of Israel, as a nation favoured by the
Almighty and destined to be strong in battle. The range of the
prediction is not nearly wide enough for any true anticipation of a
Messiah gaining universal sway by virtue of redeeming love. It is
becoming more and more necessary to set aside those interpretations
which identify the Saviour of the world with one who smites and
breaks down and destroys, who wields a sceptre after the manner of
Oriental despots.
In Balaam’s vision small nations with which he happens to be
acquainted bulk largely-the Kenites, Amalek, Moab, and Edom. To him
the Amalekites appear as having once been "the first of the
nations." We may explain, as before, that he had been impressed on
some occasion by what he had seen of their force and the royal state
of their king. The Kenites, dwelling either among the cliffs of
Engedi or the mountains of Galilee, were a very small tribe; and the
Amalekites, as well as the people of Moab and Edom, were of little
account in the development of human history. At the same time the
prophecy looks in one direction to a power destined to become very
great, when it speaks of the ships of Chittim. The course of empire
is seen to be westward. Asshur, or Assyria, and Eber-the whole
Abrahamic race, perhaps, including Israel-are threatened by this
rising power, the nearest point of which is Cyprus in the Great Sea.
Balaam is, we may say, a political prophet: to class him among those
who testified of Christ is to exalt far too much his inspiration and
read more into his oracles than they naturally contain. There is no
deep problem in the narrative regarding him-as, for instance, how a
man false at heart could in any sense enter into those gracious
purposes of God for the human race which were fulfilled by Christ.
Balaam, we are told, "rose up and returned to his own place"; and
from this it would seem that with bitterness in his heart he betook
himself to Pethor. If he did so, vainly hoping still that Israel
would appeal to him, he soon returned to give Balak and the
Midianites advice of the most nefarious kind. We learn from Num
31:16, that through his counsel the Midianite women caused the
children of Israel to commit trespass against Jehovah in the matter
of Peor. The statement is a link between chapters 24 and 25. Vainly
had Balaam as a diviner matched himself against the God of Israel.
Resenting his defeat, he sought and found another way which the
customs of his own people in their obscure idolatrous rites too
readily suggested. The moral law of Jehovah and the comparative
purity of the Israelites as His people kept them separate from the
other nations, gave them dignity and vigour. To break down this
defence would make them like the rest, would withdraw them from the
favour of their God and even defeat His purposes. The scheme was one
which only the vilest craft could have conceived; and it shows us
too plainly the real character of Balaam. He must have known the
power of the allurements which he now advised as the means of attack
on those he could not touch with his maledictions nor gain by his
soothsaying. In the shadow of this scheme of his we see the diviner
and all his tribe, and indeed the whole morality of the region, at
their very worst.
The tribes were still in the plain of Jordan; and we may suppose
that the victorious troops had returned from the campaign against
Bashan, when a band of Midianites, professing the utmost
friendliness, gradually introduced themselves into the camp. Then
began the temptation to which the Midianitish women, some of them of
high rank, willingly devoted themselves. It was to impurity and
idolatry, to degradation of manhood in body and soul, to abjuration
at once of faith and of all that makes individual and social life.
The orgies with which the Midianites were familiar belonged to the
dark side of a nature-cultus which carried the distinction between
male and female into religious symbolism, and made abject
prostration of life before the Divinity a crowning act of worship.
Surviving still, the same practices are in India and elsewhere the
most dreadful and inveterate barriers which the Gospel and Christian
civilisation encounter. The Israelites were assailed unexpectedly,
it would appear, and in a time of comparative inaction. Possibly,
also, the camp was composed to some extent of men whose families
were still in Kadesh waiting the conquest of the land of Canaan to
cross the border. But the fact need not be concealed that the
polygamy which prevailed among the Hebrews was an element in their
danger. That had not been forbidden by the law; it was even
countenanced by the example of Moses. The custom, indeed, was one
which at the stage of development Israel had reached implied some
progress; for there are conditions even worse than polygamy against
which it was a protest and safeguard. But like every other custom
falling short of the ideal of the family, it was one of great peril;
and now disaster came. The Midianites brought their sacrifices and
slew them; the festival of Baalpeor was proclaimed. "The people did
eat and bowed down to their gods." It was a transgression which
demanded swift and terrible judgment. The chief men of the tribes
who had joined in the abominable rites were taken and "hanged up
before the Lord against the sun"; the "judges of Israel" were
commanded to slay "every one his men that were joined unto Baalpeor."
The narrative of the "Priests’ Code," beginning at Num 25:6, and
going on to the close of the chapter, adds details of the sin and
its punishment. Assuming that the row of stakes with their ghastly
burden is in full view, and the dead bodies of those slain by the
executioners are lying about the camp, this narrative shows the
people gathered at the tent of meeting, many of them in tears. There
is a plague, too, which is rapidly spreading and carrying off the
transgressors. In the midst of the sorrow and wailing, when the
chief men should have been bowed down in repentance, one of the
princes of Simeon is seen leading by the hand his Midianitish
paramour, herself a chief’s daughter. In the very sight of Moses and
the people the guilty persons enter a tent. Then Phinehas, son of
Eleazar the priest, following them, inflicts with a javelin the
punishment of death. It is a daring but a true deed; and for it
Phinehas and his seed after him are promised the "covenant of
peace," even the "covenant of an everlasting priesthood." His swift
stroke has vindicated the honour of God, and "made an atonement for
the children of Israel." An act like this, when the elemental laws
of morality are imperilled and a whole people needs a swift and
impressive lesson, is a tribute to God which He will reward and
remember. True, one of the priestly house should keep aloof from
death. But the emergency demands immediate action, and he who is
bold enough to strike at once is the true friend of men and of God.
The question may be put, whether this is not justice of too rude and
ready a kind to be praised in the name of religion. To some it may
seem that the honour of God could not be served by the deed
attributed to Phinehas; that he acted in passion rather than in the
calm deliberation without which justice cannot be dealt out by man
to man. Would not this excuse the passionate action of a crowd,
impatient of the forms of law, that hurries an offender to the
nearest tree or lamp-post? And the answer cannot be that Israel was
so peculiarly under covenant to God that its necessity would
exonerate a deed otherwise illegal. We must face the whole problem
alike of personal and of united action for the vindication of
righteousness in times of widespread license.
It is not necessary now to slay an offender in order clearly and
emphatically to condemn his crime. In that respect modern
circumstances differ from those we are discussing. Upon Israel, as
it was at the time of this tragedy, no impression could have been
made deep and swift enough for the occasion otherwise than by the
act of Phinehas. But for an offender of the same rank now, there is
a punishment as stern as death, and on the popular mind it produces
a far greater effect-publicity, and the reprobation of all who love
their fellowmen and God. The act of Phinehas was not assassination;
a similar act now would be, and it would have to be dealt with as a
crime. The stroke now is inflicted by public accusation, which
results in public trial and public condemnation. From the time to
which the narrative refers, on to our own day, social conditions
have been passing through many phases. Occasionally there have been
circumstances in which the swift judgment of righteous indignation
was justifiable, though it did seem like assassination. And in no
case has such action been more excusable than when the purity of
family life has been invaded, while the law of the land would not
interfere. We do not greatly wonder that in France the avenging of
infidelity is condoned when the sufferer snatches a justice
otherwise unattainable. That is not indeed to be praised, but the
imperfection of law is a partial apology. The higher the standard of
public morality the less needful is this venture on the Divine right
to kill. And certainly it is not private revenge that is ever to be
sought, but the vindication of the elemental righteousness on which
the well-being, of humanity depends. Phinehas had no private revenge
to seek. It was the public good.
It is confidently affirmed by Wellhausen that the "Priestly Code"
makes the cultus the principal thing, and this, he says, implies
retrogression from the earlier idea. The passage we are considering,
like many others ascribed to the "Priests’ Code," makes something
else than the cultus the principal thing. We are told that in the
teaching of this code "the bond between cultus and sensuality is
severed; no danger can arise of an admixture of impure, immoral
elements, a danger which was always present in Hebrew antiquity."
But here the danger is admitted, the cultus is entirely out of
sight, and the sin of sensuality is conspicuous. When Phinehas
intervenes, moreover, it is not in harmony with any statute or
principle laid down in the "Priests’ Code"-rather, indeed, against
its general spirit, which would prohibit an Aaronite from a deed of
blood. According to the whole tenor of the law the priesthood had
its duties, carefully prescribed, by doing which faithfulness was to
be shown. Here an act of spontaneous zeal, done not "on the positive
command of a will outside," but on the impulse arising out of a
fresh occasion, receives the approval of Jehovah, and. the "covenant
of an everlasting priesthood" is confirmed for the sake of it. Was
Phinehas in any sense carrying out statutory instructions for
atonement on behalf of Israel when he inflicted the punishment of
death on Zimri and his paramour? To identify the "Priestly Code"
with "cultus legislation," and that with theocracy, and then declare
the cultus to have become a "pedagogic instrument of discipline,"
"estranged from the heart," is to make large demands on our
inattention.
In the closing verses of the chapter another question of a moral
nature is involved. It is recorded that after the events we have
considered Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, "Vex the Midianites,
and smite them; for they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they
have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi,
the daughter of the prince of Midian, their sister, which was slain
on the day of the plague in the matter of Peor." Now is it for the
sake of themselves and their own safety the Israelites are to smite
Midian? Is retaliation commanded? Does God set enmity between the
one people and the other, and so doing make confession that Israel
has no duty of forgiveness, no mission to convert and save?
There is difficulty in pronouncing judgment as to the point of view
taken by the narrator. Some will maintain that the historian here,
whoever he was, had no higher conception of the command than that it
was one which sanctioned revenge. And there is nothing on the face
of the narrative which can be brought forward to disprove the
charge. Yet it must be remembered that the history proceeds on the
theocratic conception of Israel’s place and destiny. To the writer
Israel is of less account in itself than as a people rescued from
Egypt and called to nationality in order to serve Jehovah. The whole
tenor of the "Priests’ Code" narrative, as well as of the other,
bears this out. There is no patriotic zeal in the narrow sense, -"My
country right or wrong." Scarcely a passage can be pointed to
implying such a sentiment, such a drift of thought. The underlying
idea in the whole story is the sacredness of morality, not of
Israel; and the suppression or extinction of this tribe of
Midianites with their obscene idolatry is God’s will, not Israel’s.
Too plain, indeed, is it that the Israelites would have preferred to
leave Midian and other tribes of the same low moral best unmolested,
free to pursue their own ends.
And Jehovah is not revengeful, but just. The vindication of morality
at the time the Book of Numbers deals with, and long afterwards,
could only be through the suppression of those who were identified
with dangerous forms of vice. The forces at command in Israel were
not equal to the task of converting; and what could be achieved was
commanded-opposition, enmity; if need were, exterminating war. The
better people has a certain spiritual capacity, but not enough to
make it fit for what may be called moral missionary work. It would
suffer more than it would gain if it entered on any kind of
intercourse with Midian with the view of raising the standard of
thought and life. All that can be expected meanwhile is that the
Israelites shall be at issue with a people so degraded; they are to
be against the Midianites, keep them from power in the world,
subject them by the sword.
Our judgment, then, is that the narrative sustains a true theocracy
in this sense, exhibits Israel as a unique phenomenon in human
history, not impossible, -there lies the clear veracity of the Bible
accounts, -but playing a part such as the times allowed, such as the
world required. From a passage like that now before us, and the
sequel, the war with Midian, which some have regarded as a blot on
the pages of Scripture, an argument for its inspiration may be
drawn. We find here no ethical anachronisms, no impracticable ideas
of charity and pardon. There is a sane and strenuous moral aim, not
out of keeping with the state of things in the world of that time,
yet showing the rule and presenting the will of a God who makes
Israel a protesting people. The Hebrews are men, not angels; men of
the old world, not Christians-true! Who could have received this
history if it had represented them as Christians, and shown us God
giving them commands fit for the Church of today? They are called to
a higher morality than that of Egypt, for theirs is to be spiritual;
higher than that of Chaldea or of Canaan, for Chaldea is shrouded in
superstition, Canaan in obscene idolatry. They can do something; and
what they can do Jehovah commands them to do. And He is not an
imperfect God because His prophet does not give from the first a
perfect Christian law, a redeeming gospel. He is the "I Am." Let the
whole course of Old Testament development be traced, and the sanity
and coherency of the theocratic idea as it is presented in law and
prophecy, psalm and parable, cannot fail to convince any just and
frank inquirer.
The end of Balaam’s life may be glanced at before the pages close
that refer to his career. In Num 31:8, it is stated that in the
battle which went against the Midianites Balaam was slain. We do not
know whether he was so maddened by his disappointment as to take the
sword against Jehovah and Israel, or whether he only joined the army
of Midian in his capacity of augur. F. W. Robertson imagines "the
insane frenzy with which he would rush into the field, and finding
all go against him, and that lost for which he had bartered heaven,
after having died a thousand worse than deaths, find death at last
upon the spears of the Israelites." It is of course possible to
imagine that he became the victim of his own insane passion. But
Balaam never had a profound nature, was never more than within sight
of the spiritual world. He appears as the calculating, ambitious
man, who would reckon his chances to the last, and with coolness,
and what he believed to be sagacity, decide on the next thing to
attempt. But his penetration failed him, as at a certain point it
fails all men of his kind. He ventured too far, and could not draw
back to safety.
The death he died was almost too honourable for this false prophet,
unless, indeed, he fell fleeing like a coward from the battle. One
who had recognised the power of a higher faith than his country
professed, and saw a nation on the way to the vigour that faith
inspired, who in personal spleen and envy set in operation a scheme
of the very worst sort to ruin Israel, was not an enemy worth the
edge of the sword. Let us suppose that a Hebrew soldier found him in
flight, and with a passing stroke brought him to the ground. There
is no tragedy in such a death; it is too ignominious. Whatever
Balaam was in his boyhood, whatever he might have been when the cry
escaped him, "Let me die the death of the righteous," selfish craft
had brought him below the level of the manhood of the time. Balak
with his pathetic faith in cursing and incantation now seems a
prince beside the augur. For Balaam, though he knew Jehovah after a
manner, had no religion, had only the envy of the religion of
others. He came on the stage with an air that almost deceived Balak
and has deceived many. He leaves it without one to lament him. Or
shall we rather suppose that even for him, in Pethor beyond the
Euphrates, a wife or child waited and prayed to Sutekh and, when the
tidings of his death were brought, fell into inconsolable weeping?
Over the worst they think and do men draw the veil to hide it from
some eyes. And Balaam, a poor, mean tool of the basest cravings, may
have had one to believe in him, one to love him. He reminds us of
Absalom in his character and actions-Absalom, a man void of religion
and morals; and for him the father he had dethroned and dishonoured
wept bitterly in the chamber over the gate of Mahanaim, "My son
Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"
So may some woman in Pethor have wailed for Balaam fallen under the
spear of a Hebrew warrior.
|