Balaam and the Midianite Women

Moses brought his army to the Jordan and pitched camp in the great plain opposite Jericho. This city has a very fortunate situation, and is very well suited to growing palm trees and balsam. The Israelites now began to be very proud of themselves and very eager for battle. After offering sacrifices of thanksgiving to God for a few days and feasting the people, Moses sent a force of armed men to lay waste the country of the Midianites and take their cities. The reason he had for making war on them was this.

Balak, king of the Moabites, who had a friendship and alliance with the Midianites handed down from his ancestors, saw how great the Israelites had grown and was badly frightened for himself and his kingdom. He did not know that the Hebrews would not meddle with any other country, but were to be content with possessing the land of Canaan, since God had forbidden them to go any farther. So, with more haste than wisdom, he resolved to make an attempt on them with words. He did not think it prudent to fight them after such successes — they had even come out of their failures bolder than before — but he thought to stop them from growing greater if he could, and so he resolved to send ambassadors to the Midianites about them. The Midianites knew of a certain Balaam who lived by the Euphrates, the greatest seer of that time and a friend of theirs. They sent some of their honored princes with Balak's ambassadors to beg the seer to come and call down curses for the destruction of the Israelites. Balaam received the ambassadors and treated them very kindly. After supper he asked what God's will was in the matter the Midianites were asking him to come for. When God opposed his going, he came to the ambassadors and told them that he himself was very willing and eager to grant their request, but that God was against his intentions — the God who had raised him to great reputation because his predictions came true. For the army they were asking him to come and curse was in God's favor. So he advised them to go home again and not to persist in their hostility to the Israelites; and with that answer he sent the ambassadors away. [a]

Then the Midianites, at Balak's earnest request and fervent pleading, sent other ambassadors to Balaam. Wanting to oblige the men, he asked God again. God was displeased at this trial, and told him by no means to refuse the ambassadors. Balaam did not imagine that God gave this command in order to deceive him, so he went along with the ambassadors. But the divine angel met him on the way, in a narrow passage hedged in by a wall on both sides, and the donkey Balaam was riding understood that it was a divine spirit meeting him. She pushed Balaam against one of the walls, heedless of the blows Balaam gave her when the wall hurt him. But when, as the angel kept pressing her and the blows kept falling, she fell down, by the will of God she used a human voice and complained of Balaam for treating her unjustly: he had found no fault with her in all her service to him before, and now he was beating her, not understanding that she was being kept from serving him in what he was now setting out to do by the providence of God. While he was disturbed by the donkey's voice, which was a man's voice, the angel plainly appeared to him and blamed him for the blows he had given his donkey. He told him the beast was not at fault; he himself had come to block his journey, because it was contrary to the will of God. At this Balaam was afraid and was preparing to turn back. Yet God urged him on with his intended journey, but added this command: he was to declare nothing but what God himself would put into his mind. [c]

With this charge from God he came to Balak. The king entertained him magnificently, and Balaam asked to be taken up one of the mountains to look over the state of the Hebrews' camp. Balak himself also came, and brought the seer to the mountain with a royal escort. The mountain towered above them and lay about seven and a half miles from the camp. When Balaam saw them, he asked the king to build him seven altars and bring him as many bulls and rams, and the king did so at once. Then he slaughtered the sacrifices and offered them as burnt offerings, so that he might observe some sign of the Hebrews' flight. Then he said: “Happy is this people, to whom God gives the possession of countless good things, and grants his own providence as their helper and guide! There is no nation among mankind above whom you will not be counted superior in virtue, and in the earnest pursuit of the best rules of life, rules pure from wickedness; and you will hand those rules on to children better still than yourselves. For God watches over you alone of all mankind, and provides you with whatever can make you happier than any other people under the sun. You will keep the land to which he has sent you, and it will always be ruled by your children; all the earth, and the seas as well, will be filled with their glory; and you will be numerous enough to supply the whole world, and every region of it in particular, with inhabitants of your stock. [d]

“You may well wonder, blessed army, that you have become so many from one father! The land of Canaan can hold you now, while you are still comparatively few; but know that the whole world is set before you as your dwelling place forever. The multitude of your descendants will live in the islands as well as on the mainland, and they will be more in number than the stars of heaven. And when you have become so many, God will not give up his care of you, but will give you an abundance of every good thing in times of peace, and victory and rule in times of war. May the children of your enemies be inclined to fight against you, and may they be bold enough to take up arms and attack you in battle — for they will not come back victorious, nor will their return be welcome to their children and wives. To such a height of courage will you be raised by the providence of God, who is able to diminish the plenty of some and to supply the wants of others.”

So Balaam spoke under inspiration, not in his own power but moved by the divine Spirit to say what he did. But Balak was displeased, and said Balaam had broken the agreement by which he had come, invited by Balak and his allies with the promise of great gifts: he had come to curse their enemies, and instead he had sung their praises and declared them the happiest of men. Balaam answered: “Balak, if you consider this whole matter rightly, can you suppose it is in our power to keep silent, or to say anything at all, when the Spirit of God seizes us? He puts such words as he pleases in our mouths, and speeches we are not ourselves aware of. I remember well with what pleading both you and the Midianites so gladly brought me here, and that is why I made this journey. It was my prayer that I might not affront you in what you wanted of me. But God is more powerful than the plans I had made to serve you. Those who undertake to foretell the affairs of mankind as if by their own ability are wholly unable to do it, or to hold back what God suggests to them, or to force his will; for when he comes upon us first and enters into us, nothing we say is our own. I did not intend, then, to praise this army, or to go through the many good things God meant to do for their race. But since he was so favorable to them, and so ready to give them a happy life and eternal glory, he prompted me to declare those things. Now, though, because I want to oblige you yourself as well as the Midianites, whose pleas it is not proper for me to reject, come, let us build more altars and offer the same sacrifices as before, so that I may see whether I can persuade God to let me bind these men with curses.” Balak agreed, but even when Balaam had sacrificed a second time God would not consent to his cursing the Israelites. He sacrificed a third time, on yet other altars set up again, and even then he did not curse the Israelites. Then Balaam fell on his face and foretold the disasters that would come on various kings of the nations and on the most famous cities, some of which in ancient times were not even inhabited yet. These events have come to pass among the various peoples concerned, both in earlier ages and in this one, down to my own memory, by sea and by land. From the fulfillment of all these predictions he made, one can easily guess that the rest will be fulfilled in time to come. [g]

Balak, very angry that the Israelites had not been cursed, sent Balaam away without thinking him worthy of any honor. But when Balaam was just setting out on his journey to cross the Euphrates, he sent for Balak and for the princes of the Midianites and spoke to them as follows: “Balak, and you Midianites who are here present — for I am obliged to gratify you even against the will of God — it is true that no total destruction can seize the nation of the Hebrews, whether by war or plague or failure of the crops, nor can any other unexpected accident be their complete ruin. The providence of God is concerned to preserve them from such a misfortune, and will not allow any disaster to come on them by which they might all perish. But some small misfortunes, and those for a short time, by which they may seem to be brought low, may still befall them; and after that they will flourish again, to the terror of those who brought those troubles on them. [h]

“So if you want to win a victory over them for a short time, you will have it by following my instructions. Pick out the handsomest of your daughters, those most outstanding in beauty and best able to overpower and conquer the modesty of those who look at them, and dress them and adorn them as finely as you can. Then send them near the camp, and instruct them that when the young men of the Hebrews desire their company, they should allow it; and when they see that the young men are in love with them, they should take their leave; and if the men beg them to stay, they should not consent until they have persuaded them to give up obedience to their own laws and the worship of the God who established them, and to worship the gods of the Midianites and Moabites. For by this means God will be angry with them.” When Balaam had given them this advice, he went his way.

So the Midianites sent their daughters, as Balaam had urged them. The Hebrew young men were drawn by their beauty and kept company with them, and begged them not to grudge them the enjoyment of their beauty or deny them their intimacy. These daughters of the Midianites gladly received what they said, and slept with them. But when they had brought the men to be in love with them, and the men's desire for them had grown ripe, they began to talk of leaving. Then the men were deeply distressed at the women's departure. They pressed them not to leave, but begged them to stay and become their wives, and promised that they would be mistresses of all they had. They said this with an oath, calling God as the arbiter of what they promised, and with tears in their eyes and every sign of feeling that might show how miserable they thought themselves without them, and so move the women's pity. When the women saw that they had made them their slaves and caught them by their company, they began to speak to them like this: [i]

“Illustrious young men! We have homes of our own, with great plenty of good things there, and the natural affection of parents and friends. It is not for lack of any such things that we came to talk with you, nor did we accept your invitation meaning to sell the beauty of our bodies for gain. We took you for good and upright men, and agreed to your request so that we might show you the honors hospitality required. And now, since you say you have a great affection for us and are troubled at the thought of our leaving, we are not against your pleas; and if we can receive such assurance of your goodwill as we think alone sufficient, we will gladly spend our lives with you as your wives. But we are afraid that in time you will grow tired of our company, and then mistreat us and send us back to our parents in disgrace.” And they asked the men to pardon them for guarding against that danger. The young men declared they would give them any assurance they wanted, and did not dispute anything they asked, so great was their passion for them. “If this is your resolve, then,” the women said, “since you follow customs and a way of life entirely different from all other people — so that your kinds of food are your own, and your kinds of drink are not shared with others — it will be absolutely necessary, if you want us for your wives, that you also worship our gods. There can be no other proof of the kindness you say you already have for us and promise to have hereafter than this: that you worship the same gods we do. Has anyone reason to complain that, now you have come into this country, you should worship the proper gods of this country — especially when our gods are common to all people, and yours is a God who belongs to no one else?” So they said the men must either adopt the worship that everyone else adopted, or look for another world where they could live by themselves according to their own laws. [j]

The young men, led on by their fondness for these women, thought they had spoken very well. They gave themselves up to what the women urged and broke their own laws. Supposing there were many gods, and resolving to sacrifice to them according to the laws of the country that established them, they delighted in the foreign food and went on to do everything the women wanted, even against their own laws. Indeed this lawbreaking had already spread through the whole army of young men, and they fell into a revolt much worse than the earlier one, and into danger of the complete abolition of their own institutions. For once the young had tasted these foreign customs, they plunged into them with insatiable appetite; and even some of the leading men, distinguished on account of their fathers' virtues, were corrupted along with the rest.

Even Zimri, the head of the tribe of Simeon, lived with Cozbi, a Midianite woman, the daughter of Zur, a man of authority in that country. At the woman's bidding he put what would please her ahead of what Moses had decreed. With things in this state, Moses was afraid matters would grow worse. He called the people to an assembly, but accused nobody by name, not wanting to drive to despair those who, while still hidden, might come to repentance. But he said they were not acting in a way worthy either of themselves or of their fathers, by preferring pleasure to God and to living by his will. It was right, he said, for them to change their ways while their affairs were still in good shape, and to count as true courage not the courage that does violence to their laws but the courage that resists their desires. Besides, he said, it was unreasonable, after living soberly in the wilderness, to act madly now that they were prosperous; and they ought not to lose, now that they had plenty, what they had gained when they had little. By saying this he tried to correct the young men and bring them to repentance for what they had done. [k]

But Zimri stood up after him and said: “Yes, indeed, Moses, you are free to use the laws you are so fond of; you have made them secure only through the simplicity of these people. If they had not been so simple, you would often have been punished before now, and would have learned that the Hebrews are not easily imposed on. But you will not have me as one of the followers of your tyrannical commands. Up to now you have done nothing but wickedly impose slavery on us under the pretense of laws and of God, and gain power for yourself, while you deprive us of the sweetness of life, which consists in acting as we ourselves choose, and is the right of free men who have no master over them. In this way you would be harder on the Hebrews than the Egyptians were, claiming to punish by your laws everyone's will to do what pleases him. You yourself would far more justly suffer punishment, for choosing to abolish what every people acknowledges to be good, and setting up your own absurd notion to prevail against the opinion of all. [m]

“What I now do, and think right, I will not deny afterward to be my own choice. I have married a foreign woman, as you rightly say, and you hear what I do from my own lips, as from a free man; for I truly did not intend to hide. I also sacrifice to the gods I see fit to sacrifice to. I think it right to arrive at the truth by inquiring of many people, and not, like one living under a tyranny, to let the whole hope of my life hang on one man. Nor will anyone have reason to rejoice who declares he has more authority over my actions than I have myself.”

When Zimri had said these things about what he and some others had wickedly done, the people kept silent, both out of fear of what might come on them and because they saw that their lawgiver was unwilling to drag his insolence any further before the public or to contend with him openly. He avoided that for fear that many would imitate the impudence of his language and so disturb the people. With that the assembly broke up. The wicked attempt would have gone further if Zimri had not been killed first, which happened in this way. Phinehas was a man better in other respects than the rest of the young men, and one who surpassed those of his age in the dignity of his father — for he was the son of Eleazar the high priest. He was deeply troubled at what Zimri had done, and resolved in earnest to punish him, before his shameful conduct grew stronger by going unpunished, and to keep this lawbreaking from going further, as it would if the ringleaders were not punished. He was of such great spirit, in strength of both mind and body, that when he undertook any very dangerous attempt, he did not leave off until he had mastered it and won a complete victory. So he went into Zimri's tent, struck him with his sword and killed him, and Cozbi too. At this, all the young men who cared for virtue and aimed at a glorious deed imitated Phinehas's boldness and killed those found guilty of the same crime as Zimri. In this way many of those who had broken the law perished by the noble courage of these young men. Others perished by a plague, a sickness God himself sent on them: their relatives, who ought to have kept them from such wicked actions but had urged them on instead, were counted by God as wrongdoers, and died. So no fewer than fourteen thousand of the army perished at this time. [n]

This was the reason Moses was provoked to send an army to destroy the Midianites. We will speak of that expedition shortly, once we have first related what we have left out; for it is only right not to pass over the praise due to our lawgiver for his conduct here. This Balaam had been sent for by the Midianites to curse the Hebrews, and though he was prevented from doing so by divine providence, he still gave them that advice; and by using it our enemies very nearly corrupted the whole multitude of the Hebrews with their wiles, until some of them were deeply infected with their opinions. Yet Moses did him great honor by writing down his prophecies. Though it was in his power to claim this glory for himself and make people believe the predictions were his own, with no one able to testify against him and accuse him of doing so, he still gave Balaam his witness and did him the honor of mentioning him on this account. But let everyone think of these matters as he pleases. [r]