an object, "he went no more," we are told, "to seek for enchantments" (xxiv, 1). His religion, therefore, was probably such as would be the natural result of a general acquaintance with God not confirmed by any covenant. He knew Him as the fountain of wisdom ; how to worship Him he could merely guess from the customs in vogue at the time. Sacrifices had been used by the patriarchs ; to what extent they were ef- ficient could only be surmised. There is an allusion to Balaam in the Prophet Micah (vi, 5), where Bishop Butler thinks that a conversation is preserved which occurred between him and the King of Moab upon this occasion. But such an opinion is hardly tenable, if ws bear in mind that Balak is nowhere represented as consulting Balaam upon the acceptable mode of wor- shipping God, and that the directions found in Micah are of quite an opposite character to those which were given by the son of Beor upon the high-places of Baal. The prophet is recounting " the righteousness of the Lord" in delivering His people out of the hand of Moab under Balak, and at the mention of his name the histor3r of Balaam comes back upon his mind, and he is led to make those noble reflections upon it which occur in the following verse. " The doctrine of Balaam" is spoken of in Lev. ii, 14, where an allusion has been supposed to the founder of the sect of the Nicolaitans, mentioned in v. 15. See Nicolaitans. Though the utterance of Balaam was overruled so that he could not curse the children of Israel, he nevertheless sug- gested to the Moabites the expedient of seducing them to commit fornication. The effect of this is recorded in ch. xxv. A battle was afterward fought against the Midianites, in which Balaam sided with them, and was slain by the sword of the people whom he had en- deavored to curse (Num. xxxi, 8). B.C. 1018. (Comp. Bishop Butler's Servians, scrm. vii; Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, ii, 277; Stanley, Jewish Ch. i, 209 sq.) i Of the numerous paradoxes which we find in " this strange mixture of a man," as Bishop Newton terms him, not the least striking is that with the practice of an art expressly forbidden to the Israelites ("there shall not be found among you one that useth divina- tion" [Dent, xviii, 10], " for all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord," ver. 12) he united the knowledge and worship of Jehovah, and was in the habit of receiving intimations of his will : "I will bring you word again as the Lord (Jehovah) shall speak unto me" (Num. xxii, 8). The inquiry natu- rally arises, by what means did he become acquainted with the true religion ? Dr. Hengstenberg suggests that he was led to renounce idolatry by the reports that reached him of the miracles attending the Exodus ; and that, having experienced the deceptive nature of the soothsaying art, he hoped, by becoming a worship- per of the God of the Hebrews, to acquire fresh power over nature, and a clearer insight into futurity. Yet the sacred narrative gives us no reason to suppose that he had any previous knowledge of the Israelites. In Num. xxii, 11, he merely repeats Balak's message, " Behold, there is a people come out of Egypt," etc., without intimating that he had heard of the miracles wrought on their behalf. The allusion in Num. xxiii, 22, might be prompted by the divine afflatus which he then felt. And had he been actuated in the first in- stance, by motives of personal aggrandizement, it seems hardly probable that he would have been favored with those divine communications with which his language, in Num. xxii, 8, implies a familiarity. Since, in the case of Simon Magus, the offer to " purchase the gift of God with money" (Acts viii, 20) called forth an im- mediate and awful rebuke from the apostles, would not Balaam's attempt to obtain a similar gift, with a direct view to personal emolument and fame, have met with a similar repulse ? Dr. Hengstenberg supposes, indeed, that there was a mixture of a higher order of sentiments, a sense of the wants of his moral nature, which led him to seek Jehovah, and laid a foundation
BALAAM
623
BALAMO
for intercourse with him. In the absence of more co- pious and precise information, may we not reasonably conjecture that Jacob's residence for twenty years in Mesopotamia contributed to maintain some just ideas of religion, though mingled with much superstition? To this source, and the existing remains of patriarchal religion, Balaam was probably indebted for that truth which he unhappily "restrained by unrighteousness" (Rom. i, 18). (See Onder, De Bileamo, Jen. 1715.)
On the narrative contained in Num. xxii, 22-35, a difference of opinion has long existed, even among those who full}' admit its authenticity. The advo- cates for a literal interpretation urge that, in a histori- cal work and a narrative bearing the same character, it would be unnatural to regard any of the occurrences as taking place in vision, unless expressly so stated ; that it would be difficult to determine where the vision begins and where it ends; that Jehovah's "opening the mouth of the ass" (Num. xxii, 28) must have been an external act ; and, finally, that Peter's language is decidedly in favor of the literal sense : " The dumb ass, speaking with a man's voice, reproved the madness of the prophet" (2 Pet. ii, 1G). Those who conceive that the speaking of the ass and the appearance of the an- gel occurred in vision to Balaam (among whom are Maimonides, Leibnitz, and Hengstenberg) insist upon the fact that dreams and visions were the ordinary methods by which God made himself known to the prophets (Num. xii, G) ; they remark that Balaam, in the introduction to his third and fourth prophecies (xxiv, 3, 4, 15), speaks of himself as "the man who had his eyes shut," and who, on falling down in pro- phetic ecstasy, had his eyes opened ; that he express- ed no surprise on hearing the ass speak ; and that nei- ther his servants nor the Moabitish princes who accom- panied him appear to have been cognizant of any su- •pernatural appearance. Dr. Jortin supposes that the angel of the Lord suffered himself to be seen by the beast, but not by the prophet ; that the beast was ter- rified, and Balaam smote her, and then fell into a trance, and in that state conversed first with the beast and then with the angel. The angel presented these objects to his imagination as strongly as if they had been before his eyes, so that this was still a miraculous or preternatural operation. In dreaming, many sin- gular incongruities occur without exciting our aston- ishment ; it is therefore not wonderful if the prophet conversed with his beast in vision without being startled at such a phenomenon (sec Jortin' s Disserta- tion on Balaam, p. 190-194). See Ass (of Balaam).