CHAPTER III.
CONQUEST OF THE EAST OF JORDAN—BALAAM AND BALAK.
Num.
xxi.–xxiv.
B.C. 1451.
THE country north of the present encampment of the Israelites from the Arnon to the Jabbok was at this time possessed by the Amorites. We have already met with this tribe on the western side of the Jordan (Gen. xiv. 7, 13; xiii. 18; Num. xiii. 29124). Tempted by the rich pasture lands east of this river a colony of them appears to have crossed, and having driven the Moabites with great slaughter and the loss of many captives from the country south of the Jabbok (Num. xxi. 26–29), to have made the wide chasm of the Arnon henceforth the boundary between them.
The Amorite king at this time was Sihon, and his capital was Heshbon, twenty miles east of the Jordan, on the parallel of the northern end of the Dead Sea. Thither the Israelitish leader sent messengers requesting a peaceful passage through his territory, and promising the same respect for his land and possessions, which had already been proposed to the Edomites. But their request was rudely rejected. Sihon would not allow them even to pass through his borders, but assembled his forces, and prepared for battle. The Israelites did not decline the engagement, which took place at Jahaz, probably a short distance south of Heshbon, and resulted in the total defeat of the Amorites; Sihon himself, his sons, and all his people were smitten with the sword, his walled towns Ar and Heshbon, Nophah and Medeba were captured, and his numerous flocks and herds fell into the hands of the victors, who thus became masters of the entire country between the Arnon and the Jabbok (Num. xxi. 27–30).
Apparently about the same time that Sihon had expelled the Moabites from the rich territory south of the Jabbok, another Amorite chief seized the country extending from that river to the foot of Hermon, and known as the land of Bashan. His name was Og, one of the last of the giant-race of Rephaim. He ruled over sixty cities, and his stronghold was a remarkable oval district, about 22 miles from north to south by 14 from west to east, called by the Hebrews Argob, or the stony, afterwards by the Greeks Trachonitis, and now Lejah. This extraordinary region has been described as “an ocean of basaltic rocks and boulders, tossed about in the wildest confusion, and intermingled with fissures and crevices in every direction, and yet in spite of its ungainly and forbidding features thickly studded even now with deserted cities and villages, in all of which the dwellings are solidly built and of remote antiquity125.” On a rocky promontory south-west of this marvellous region, “without water, without access, save over rocks and through defiles almost impracticable126,” was the city of Edrei (strength). Here, “as if in the Thermopylæ of his kingdom,” the giant king of Bashan and all his people resolved to encounter the advancing hosts of the Israelites, led, it seems probable, by two eminent chiefs of the tribe of Manasseh, Jair and Nobah. (Comp. Num. xxxii. 41, 42; Deut. iii. 14.) Like the Amorite chief of Heshbon, Og could not withstand the valour of the Israelites. He was utterly routed, and his threescore cities fenced with high walls, gates and bars, besides unwalled towns a great many, fell into their hands. A trophy of this victory, long preserved by the children of Ammon in the city of Rabbah, was the huge iron bedstead127 of the Amorite king, nine cubits long, by four wide; and long afterwards the subjugation of Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og the king of Bashan, great kings, famous kings, mighty kings, was deemed worthy of being ranked with the tokens and wonders wrought in the land of Egypt, and the overthrow of Pharaoh in the Red Sea (Ps. cxxxv. 10–12; cxxxvi. 15–21).
After these two decisive engagements, which made them masters of the entire country east of the Jordan, from the wide chasm of the Arnon to the foot of the snow-capped Hermon, the Israelites encamped in the plains of Shittim, or the Meadow of the Acacias, amidst “the long belt of acacia-groves, which, on its eastern as well as its western side, line the upper terraces of the Jordan over against Jericho128.” South of the Arnon was the little corner of territory occupied by Moab, who viewed with no little alarm the successes of the Israelites against such mighty kings as Sihon and Og. This people, said Balak the king of Moab to the elders of Midian, lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field. Sensible of the uselessness of attacking a nation so manifestly under the protection of an Invisible Power, the two confederate tribes resolved before falling upon them to place them under an awful curse, which might have the effect of paralysing their arms129. At this time no man was supposed to have greater power in this way than a famous Prophet named Balaam, the son of Beor. He lived far away from the present encampment of the Israelites at Pethor, beyond the Euphrates, in Aram among the mountains of the East, but his fame had spread across the Assyrian desert even to the shores of the Dead Sea. His gifts he exercised as a Prophet of the same God, who had wrought so many miracles in behalf of the Israelites. If, therefore, he could be persuaded to lay upon them his powerful ban, their further success the Moabites thought might be checked, and the children of Lot might not only recover the land of which they had been deprived by the Amorites, but possibly add to them the fertile territory the Israelites had so lately won from Sihon and Og.
Accordingly, elders both of Moab and Midian, with the rewards of divination in their hands, were despatched eastward across the Assyrian desert to intreat the aid of the powerful Prophet. On reaching their destination and announcing the purport of their errand, Balaam, uncertain of the lawfulness of complying with it, requested them to lodge there that night, while he ascertained the will of Jehovah. The answer he obtained was unfavourable. Thou shalt not go with them; said God, thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed. On the morrow, therefore, he sent the messengers away, bidding them announce to their master that Jehovah forbade his accompanying them.
Undeterred by this failure, and possibly informed by his messengers that the Prophet himself did not seem unwilling to come, the king of Moab sent a second embassy consisting of princes more and more honourable than the last, to inform him that he would advance him to very great honour, and do whatever he commanded, if only he would come. Again, therefore, the toilsome Syrian desert was traversed, and the messengers preferred their request. But again they seemed to have come in vain. If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, said the Prophet, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord to do less or more. But instead of at once sending the messengers away, he bade them lodge with him that night, while he consulted the Lord a second time. On this occasion the word of the Lord came to him, and bade him go, but authorized him to speak nothing more and nothing less than the very words that should be put into his mouth. Balaam accordingly set out on his journey, but he was not to accomplish it without receiving another and a more terrible warning against it and its object. As he rode upon his ass, the Angel of the Lord stood in the way, with his sword drawn in his hand. As if in derision of his claims to be a powerful Seer, the beast alone discerned the celestial Adversary, and started aside out of the way into a field. On this, Balaam smote it, and turned it into a path running through some vineyards. But again the Angel confronted the wilful Prophet, and the frightened ass in its efforts to avoid him crushed his foot against the wall. Therefore Balaam struck it a second time, and now, as if in still deeper derision of one, who claimed to be able to reveal to kings and princes the will of the Invisible, the dumb beast, in the accents of a man forbad the madness of the Prophet (2 Pet. ii. 16). On this, Balaam’s eyes were at length opened, and as he bowed himself down before the Angel, he was sternly rebuked for his wilfulness, and proposed to turn back rather than displease the Lord. But since his mind was wholly bent on that course, he was a second time bidden to proceed, but a second time also warned against uttering any other words than those which a Divine Power should put into his mouth.
The journey was now resumed, and at length the watchmen of Balak announced to their master that the mighty Prophet was approaching. Therefore Balak went forth to meet him, and after a brief rebuke of his delay, conducted his visitor to Kirjath-Huzoth, the Town of Streets, a place in the furthest borders of his kingdom, and possibly of sacred or oracular reputation130, where he entertained him at a great feast. On the next day he conducted him to the high places dedicated to Baal (Num. xxii. 41) that rose above the encampment of the Israelites, whence he might gain a view of the utmost part of the people he had desired him to curse. There by the Prophet’s direction the king erected seven altars, and on each they offered together a bullock and a ram, and while Balak with his attendant princes stood by his burnt-offering, Balaam went forth to a high place (Num. xxiii. 3) to learn the Divine will. And God met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and returning to the expectant king, he declared that it was impossible for him to curse Jacob and defy Israel, that he could not curse him whom God had not cursed, or defy him whom Jehovah had not defied.
On hearing this response so entirely opposite to what he had expected, Balak was highly incensed, but thinking a change of view might have a different influence on the Prophet’s spirit, he brought him to Zophim131, a cultivated field of the Watchmen high up on the range of Pisgah. Again the altars were built, and the victims slain; again the king stood by his burnt-sacrifice, and again Balaam went forth to meet the Lord. But still the answer was unfavourable. The steam of sacrifice could not bend the will of Jehovah; He was not a man that He should lie, or repent of His fixed purpose; what He had said He would do, what He had spoken He would perform; in Jacob He had not beheld iniquity, neither had He seen perverseness in Israel; He had brought them out of Egypt, and neither augury nor divination could prevail against them.
More incensed than before, the king of Moab burst forth into bitter complaints against the Prophet, and though the latter reminded him that he could speak nothing but the word of Jehovah, yet he determined from one more point to show him the people, that peradventure he might thence effect the potent curse. He led him up, therefore, to a peak, where stood the sanctuary of Peor (Num. xxiii. 28), looking toward Jeshimon or the waste, “probably the dreary barren waste of the hills lying immediately on the east of the Dead Sea.” There the seven altars were for the third time built, and the victims for the third time slain. But Balaam was now convinced that Jehovah was pleased only to bless the people. Without resorting, therefore, any more to useless divinations, he lifted up his eyes, and looked down upon the tribes encamped in the acacia groves below him, with their goodly tents spread out like the valleys, or watercourses of the mountains, like the hanging gardens beside his own great river Euphrates, as lign-aloes which the Lord had planted, as cedar trees beside the waters (Num. xxiv. 6). And as he stood, “with tranced yet open gaze” he saw the Vision of the Almighty, and “in outline dim and vast” beheld the future of the “desert-wearied tribes” that lay encamped before him “in sight of Canaan132.” He beheld them pouring water from their buckets, their seed in many waters, their king higher than any Amalekite Agag ruling in the Arabian wilderness south of where he stood. He knew that God had brought them forth out of Egypt, and that their strength was like that of the unicorn. He foresaw them couched as a lion, and lying down as a great lion, eating up the nations their enemies, breaking their bones, and piercing them through with the arrows of their archers. Blessed was he that blessed them, and cursed was he that cursed them (Num. xxiv. 1–9).
Balak’s vexation was now increased tenfold. Smiting his hands together he upbraided the Prophet for his deceit, and in place of advancing him, as he had intended, to high honour, bade him flee for his life to his native land. Nor was the other loath to go. But before he went, for he felt himself still moved by the prophetic spirit, he would advertise the king of what this mysterious people would do to his people in the latter days (Num. xxiv. 14). Again, therefore, he took up his parable, and saw, but not now,—he beheld but not nigh, a Star, bright as any that spangled the Eastern sky, coming out of Jacob, and a sceptre rising out of Israel, smiting through the princes of Moab133, and destroying all their wild warriors the sons of tumult134. One by one he saw “the giant forms of empires on their way to ruin;” Edom and Seir becoming a possession for their enemies; Amalek, then the first of the nations, in his latter end perishing for ever; the Kenites, then strong in their dwelling-place, and putting their nest in the neighbouring rocks of En-gedi wasted and made a prey; nay even Israel carried away captive by Asshur. And yet once more he saw woe in store even for Asshur, even for his own native land. Far in the distant future he saw ships coming from Chittim, the island of Cyprus, to afflict Asshur and to afflict Eber, till the proud kingdoms of the Eastern world, and he who should afflict them perished for ever135. And then the Vision closed. The “true Prophetic light died away,” and the king of Moab, baffled and disappointed, returned to his people.
CHAPTER IV.
WAR WITH THE MIDIANITES—DEATH OF MOSES.
Numb.
xxv.–xxxii.
Deut. xxxii.
B.C. 1451.
BUT though his tongue had pronounced eloquent blessings upon the people he found he could not curse, Balaam’s heart was filled with malice against them. Dismissed by the king of Moab without the promised honours and rewards, he lingered amongst the neighbouring Midianites, and with the keen hatred of his now hardened heart counselled them to join the children of Moab in seducing the Israelites from their allegiance to Jehovah. The festival of Baal-Peor was at hand, and was celebrated with all the unbridled licentiousness of a heathen orgy. If the Israelites could be persuaded to join in it, they might, he suggested, become “as other men,” and the Invisible protection now vouchsafed would be withdrawn (Num. xxxi. 16). His artful suggestion was adopted. The festival was celebrated, and the Israelites fell into the snare. They joined themselves to Baal-Peor, took part in the hideous rites, and defiled themselves before the Lord. Thus they brought upon themselves a curse far more real than any that the divinations of Balaam could have effected. Had such apostasy gone unpunished, the Strength of Israel would indeed have ceased, and the counsels of the wily Prophet would have been successful. The crisis required severe and exemplary visitation. A plague broke out which swept off upwards of 24,000, and the princes of the tribes, at the command of Moses, slew the guilty with unsparing vigour, and hanged them up before the Lord. On this occasion Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, and grandson of Aaron, particularly distinguished himself by his righteous zeal, which was accepted as an atonement for the people, and rewarded not only by the cessation of the pestilence, but with a promise that the priesthood should remain in his family for ever.
But a terrible vengeance was denounced against the crafty Midianites, and after a second numbering of the people by Moses and Eleazar, a Sacred War was proclaimed. A thousand warriors from each tribe, led not by Joshua, but by Phinehas, and accompanied by the Ark, went forth to execute the task of righteous retribution. The silver trumpets sounded the signal for the onset, and the Midianites were utterly routed. Five of their chiefs, Evi and Rekem, Zur and Hur and Reba, as also all their males, were put to death; their cities were burnt; their goodly castles fired; their women and children taken captive; nor did the crafty prophet escape; he received the wages of his unrighteousness, and perished by the sword (Num. xxxi. 8; 2 Pet. ii. 15).
The country east of the Jordan, which the Israelites had now wrested from Sihon and Og, was to a great extent a long table-land of undulating downs famed for its rich pasturage136, and clothed with luxuriant vegetation. It was the forest-land, the pasture-land of Palestine, a place for cattle (Num. xxxii. 1). Of the tribes of Israel, as we have already noticed137, Reuben and Gad were eminently pastoral, they had a very great multitude of cattle (Num. xxxii. 1). On the conclusion, therefore, of the Sacred War against the Midianites, they approached Moses and the elders of Israel with the petition that they might be allowed to settle down in a region so peculiarly suited to their requirements. This request seemed to the Israelitish leader to savour of a desire to shrink from the arduous work which lay before the nation, and as likely to discourage the people from crossing over and attempting the conquest of the rugged western country, and he reproached them for their apparent selfishness and indifference to the welfare of their brethren. But the two tribes protested their perfect sympathy with the great national cause; they were ready to send the flower of their troops across the river, and only wished for the present to build sheepfolds for their cattle, and cities for their little ones, whither they might return on the conquest of the western country. This promise was deemed sufficient, and Moses distributed between them the lately conquered territory, assigning to Reuben and Gad the kingdom of Sihon from the Arnon to the Jabbok138, and intrusting to the half of the warlike tribe of Manasseh, whose warriors had taken so prominent a part in the conquest of the east of Jordan (Num. xxxii. 39; Deut. iii. 13–15), the inaccessible heights and impassible ravines of Bashan, and the almost impregnable tract of Argob139, the chief stronghold of the giant Og.
Meanwhile it had been once and again intimated to the Israelitish leader that the day drew near, when he must be gathered unto his fathers. Under the special direction, therefore, of Jehovah, he now occupied himself with giving final and specific instructions respecting the future government of the nation. Joshua “his minister” was solemnly appointed to be his successor; the boundaries of the Promised Land were definitely marked out (Num. xxxiv.); its cities with their suburbs, including six “cities of refuge” for the unwitting manslayer, were assigned to the tribe of Levi (Num. xxxv.), and other necessary regulations were made.
For an ordinary leader this would have been enough. But the recent sad occurrences in the matter of Baal-Peor had only too surely reminded Moses of the fickle tendencies of the nation, and none knew better than himself the awful consequences of national apostasy. For the last time, therefore, he assembled the people together and delivered to them his final counsels. Commencing with a retrospect of the past forty years, he reminded them of the goodness and faithfulness which had always followed them, in spite of their murmurings and discontent, and the victories they had been enabled to achieve (Deut. i–iv. 43). He recapitulated the Law given on Mount Sinai, with such additions or modifications as his own enlarged experience suggested (Deut. v. 1–xxvi. 19), and appointed a day, on which, at the conclusion of the conquest, its blessings and curses were to be ratified by the nation with the most imposing and solemn ceremonies (Deut. xxvii.). He then, for the last time, enlarged on the exalted vocation of the nation, and the blessings which would assuredly accompany obedience to the Divine laws, in the city and the field, in their basket and their store, in their going out and their coming in, and dwelt with no less earnestness on the terrible punishments which would follow apostasy and transgression, “in furnishing images for which the whole realm of nature was exhausted, and which nothing excepting the real horrors of the Jewish history, the misery of their sieges, the cruelty, the contempt, the oppressions, which for ages this scattered, despised, and detested nation have endured, can approach140” (Deut. xxviii.–xxx.).
But oral delivery was not deemed sufficient. He, therefore, wrote out the Law, with its blessings and its curses, and gave it to the priests, charging them to place it beside the Ark in the Holy of Holies, and to read it, in the hearing of all the people, once every seven years, at the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut. xxxi. 9, 26). Then turning to Joshua, whom he had already nominated as his successor, he bade him Be strong and of a good courage, assuring him that Jehovah would be with him, and would make all he did to prosper. But as if to deepen the gloomy forebodings past experience must have suggested, the Lord Himself not only announced in the clearest terms the future apostasy of the people (Deut. xxxi. 16–18), but directed Moses to compose a Song, which the people were to learn and teach their children, as a testimony against themselves in the days to come, when they should have turned unto other gods, and served them, and provoked the Lord, and broken His covenant (Deut. xxxi. 18, 21; xxxii. 1–43). Having composed this Song of Witness141, and pronounced his last solemn blessing, not like Jacob upon twelve men gathered round his deathbed, but on a mighty nation, on the ten thousands of Ephraim, and the thousands of Manasseh, the aged Prophet, whose eye was not dim nor his natural force abated, was warned that his hour was come. From the plains of Moab he went up the mountain of Nebo, to the highest point in the long eastern range over against Jericho, and there He who called him to his high mission at the Burning Bush showed him that land, which had been so long sworn to the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Eastward and westward, southward and northward, he surveyed that goodly Land; he saw it all with his eyes though he was not to set his foot thereon. “Beneath him lay the tents of Israel ready for the march; and ‘over against’ them, distinctly visible in its grove of palm-trees, the stately Jericho, key of the Land of Promise. Beyond was spread out the whole range of the mountains of Palestine, in its fourfold masses; ‘all Gilead’ with Hermon and Lebanon in the east and north; the hills of Galilee, overhanging the lake of Gennesareth; the wide opening where lay the plain of Esdraelon, the future battle-field of the nations; the rounded summits of Ebal and Gerizim; immediately in front of him the hills of Judæa, and, amidst them, seen distinctly through the rents in their rocky walls, Bethlehem on its narrow ridge, and the invincible fortress of Jebus142.” Such was his Pisgah-view, and then all was over. The great Prophet had served his day and his generation, he had reached his 120th year, and his work was ended. There, in the land of Moab, he died, and He whom he had served faithfully in all His house, buried him in a valley or ravine in the land of Moab, over against the idol-sanctuary of Beth-Peor (Deut. xxxiv. 6), but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.
Note.
Three points in reference to Moses deserve attention: (i) His work, (ii) His character, (iii) His office. (i) His work. “The Hebrew lawgiver was a man who, considered merely in an historical light, without any reference to his Divine inspiration, has exercised a more extensive and permanent influence over the destinies of his own nation and mankind at large, than any other individual recorded in the annals of the world.... To his own nation he was chieftain, historian, poet, lawgiver. He was more than all these, he was the founder of their civil existence. Other founders of republics and distinguished legislators have been, like Numa, already at the head of a settled and organized community; or have been voluntarily invested with authority, like Lycurgus and Solon, by a people suffering the inconvenience of anarchy. Moses had first to form his own people, to lead them out of captivity, to train them for forty years in the desert, and bestow on them a country of their own, before he could create his commonwealth.” (ii) His character. “The word meekness (Num. xii. 3) which is used in Scripture in reference to his personal character ‘represents what we should now designate by the word disinterested.’ All that is told of him indicates a withdrawal of himself, a preference of the cause of his own nation to his own interests, which makes him the most complete example of Jewish patriotism.” He joins his countrymen in their degrading servitude (Ex. ii. 11; v. 4); he forgets himself to avenge their wrongs (Ex. iv. 13). He wishes that not he only, but all the nation were gifted alike: Enviest thou for my sake? (Num. xi. 29.) When the offer is made that the people should be destroyed, and that he should be made a great nation (Ex. xxxii. 10), he prays that they may be forgiven—if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written (Ex. xxxii. 32). Even when excluded from realizing the hopes of a lifetime, his zeal for his people suffers no diminution. (iii) His office. While other prophets saw Jehovah only in visions and dreams, Moses spake with Him mouth to mouth, and was entrusted with the whole household of God (Heb. iii. 2, 5). He was at once Deliverer, Lawgiver, Priest, Teacher, Leader, and Judge. His prophetic gift controlled, pervaded, inspired, and regulated all these functions, and he was thus an eminent type of a still greater Prophet (Deut. xviii. 15, 18) to be raised up to Israel from among their brethren, (i) as a Redeemer of his people; (ii) as a Mediator between them and God; (iii) as a Teacher and Lawgiver; (iv) as receiving the fullest communications from God; (v) as the Revealer of a new name of God; (vi) as the founder of a new religious society. See Milman’s History of the Jews, I. 214; Article Moses, in Smith’s Bib. Dict.; Kurtz’s History of the Old Covenant, III. 478; Davison On Prophecy, pp. 110–112.