And King Balak was surprised at Balaam's words. He said:
"What have you done? I brought you to curse my enemies, and instead you have blessed them!"
And Balaam answered, "Did I not tell you beforehand, that I could only say the words that God should put into my mouth?"
But King Balak thought that he would try again to obtain from Balaam a curse against Israel. He brought him to another place, where they could look down on the Israelites, and again offered sacrifices. And again God gave a message to Balaam; and Balaam said:
"Rise up, King Balak, and hear. God is not a man, that he should lie, or that he should change his mind. What God has said, that he will do. He has commanded me to bless this people; yea, and blessed shall they be. The Lord God is their king, and he shall lead them, and give them victory."
Then King Balak said to Balaam:
"If you cannot curse this people, do not bless them, but leave them alone!"
And Balaam said again, "Did I not tell you, that what God gives me to speak, that I must speak?"
But King Balak was not yet satisfied. He brought Balaam to still another place, and offered sacrifices as before. And again the Spirit of God came on Balaam. Looking down on the camp of Israel, he said:
"How goodly are your tents, O Israel! And your tabernacles, O Jacob! God has brought him out of Egypt; and God shall give him the land of promise. He shall destroy his enemies; Israel shall be like a lion when he rises up. Blessed be every one who blesses him; and cursed be every one that curses him!"
And Balak, the king of Moab, was very angry with Balaam the prophet.
"I called you," said Balak, "to curse my enemies; and you have blessed them over and over again. Go back to your own home. I meant to give you great honor and riches; but your God has kept you back from your reward!"
And Balaam said to Balak:
"Did I not say to your messengers, 'If Balak should give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond God's command, to say good or evil? What God speaks, that I must speak.' Now let me tell you what this people shall do to your people in the years to come. A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall be stretched forth from Israel that shall rule over Moab. All these lands, Edom, and Mount Seir, and Moab, and Ammon, shall some time be under the rule of Israel."
And all this came to pass, though it was four hundred years afterward, when David, the king of Israel, made all those countries subject to his rule.
But Balaam soon showed that although for a time God spoke through his lips, in his heart he was no true servant of God. Although he could not speak a curse against the Israelites, he still longed for the money that King Balak was ready to give him if he would only help Balak to weaken the power of Israel. And he tried another plan to do harm to Israel.
Balaam told King Balak that the best plan for him and his people would be to make the Israelites their friends, to marry among them, and not to make war upon them. And this the Moabites did; until many of the Israelites married the daughters of Moab, and then they began to worship the idols of Moab.
This was worse for the Israelites than making war upon them. For if the people of Israel should be friendly with the idol-worshipping people around them, the Moabites east of the Dead Sea, the Ammonites near the wilderness, and the Edomites on the south, they would soon forget the Lord, and begin to worship idols.
There was danger that all the people would be led into sin. And God sent a plague of death upon the people, and many died. Then Moses took the men who were leading Israel into sin, and put them to death. And after this the Israelites made war upon the Moabites, and their neighbors, the Midianites, who were joined with them. They beat them in a great battle, and killed many of them. And among the men of Moab they found Balaam the prophet; and they killed him also, because he had given advice to the Moabites which brought harm to Israel.
It would have been better for Balaam to have stayed at home, and not to have come when King Balak called him; or it would have been well for him to have gone back to his home when the angel met him. He might then have lived in honor; but he knew God's will, and tried to go against it, and died in disgrace among the enemies of God's people.
How Moses Looked upon the Promised Land
Numbers xxvi: 1 to 4, 63 to 65; xxxii: 1 to 42; Deuteronomy xxxi: 1, to xxxiv: 12.
While the Israelites were in their camp on the plain beside the river Jordan, at the foot of the mountains of Moab, God told Moses to count the number of the men who were old enough and strong enough to go forth to war. And Moses caused the men to be counted who were above twenty years of age, and found them to be a little more than six hundred thousand in number. Besides these were the women and children.
And among them all were only three men who were above sixty years of age, men who had been more than twenty years old forty years before, when the Israelites came out of Egypt. The men who had been afraid to enter the land of Canaan, when they were at Kadesh-barnea the first time (see Story Thirty), had all died. Some of them had been slain by the enemies in war; some had died in the wilderness during the forty years; some had perished by the plague; some had been bitten by the fiery serpents. Of all those who had come out of Egypt as men, the only ones living were Moses, and Joshua, and Caleb. Moses was not a hundred and twenty years old. He had lived forty years as a prince in Egypt, forty years as a shepherd in Midian, and forty years as the leader of Israel in the wilderness. But although he was so very old, God had kept his strength. His eyes were as bright, his mind was as clear, and his arm and heart were as strong as they had been when he was a young man.
The people of Israel had now full possession of all the land on the east of the river Jordan, from the brook Arnon up to the great Mount Hermon. Much of this land was well fitted for pasture; for grass was green and rich, and there were many streams of water. There were two of the twelve tribes, and half of another tribe, whose people had great flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of cattle. These were the tribes which had sprung from Reuben and Gad, the sons of Jacob, and half of the tribe of Manasseh, the son of Joseph. For there were two tribes that had sprung from Joseph, his descendants, the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh.
The men of Reuben, Gad, and half the men of Manasseh came to Moses, and said:
"The land on this side of the river is good for the feeding of sheep and cattle; and we are shepherds and herdsmen. Cannot we have our possessions on this side of the river, and give all the land beyond the river to our brothers of the other tribes?"
Moses was not pleased at this; for he thought that the men of these tribes wished to have their home at once in order to avoid going to war with the rest of the tribes; and this may have been in the minds.
So Moses said to them:
"Shall your brothers of the other tribes go to the war? And shall you sit here in your own land, and not help them? That would be wicked, and would displease the Lord your God." Then the men of the two tribes and the half-tribe came again to Moses, and said to him:
"We will build sheepfolds here for our sheep, and we will choose some cities to place our wives and our children in; but we ourselves will go armed with our brothers of the other tribes, and will help them to take the land on the other side of the Jordan. We will not come back to this side of the river until the war is over, and our brothers have taken their shares of the land, each tribe its own part; and we will take no part on the other side of the river, because our place has been given to us here. And when the land is all won and divided, then we will come back here to our wives and our children."
Then Moses was satisfied with the promise that they had given, and he divided the land on the east of the Jordan to these tribes. To the men of Reuben he gave the land on the south; to the men of Gad the land in the middle; and to the half-tribe of Manasseh the land on the north, the country called Bashan. And after their wives and children and flocks had been placed safely, the men of war came to the camp, ready to go with the other tribes across the river when God should call them.