Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.- Num_31:8.
1. Driven with disgrace and dishonour from the presence of him at whose bidding he had undertaken this ill-omened journey, having offended God without pleasing men, like so many who forfeit heaven and yet fail to win earth, who, letting go the substance, snatch at the shadow, and miss shadow and substance alike, Balaam makes one last and desperate effort to obtain the favour and the rewards which he sees escaping from his hands; and he, the man to whom and by whom God had spoken, who saw the vision of the Almighty, whose eyes God had opened, is the author of the devilish suggestion that the children of Israel should be seduced to uncleanness, and so robbed of their righteousness. Their crime and punishment are related in Deuteronomy and Numbers. And from the narrative given in Numbers, it appears that Balaam was the contriver of the whole matter. It is also ascribed to him in the Book of Revelation, where he is said to have taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel.
2. This was a man who would not for lucre or for influence disobey his conscience, yet laboured to corrupt his conscience. He saw the good and the blessing of goodness, yet longed and strove to transfer that blessing to the evil, and “paltered with eternal God” for leave so to bestow it. He saw that the endless victory must rest with the children of God, and he yearned to attain to it through a death like theirs; yet he set himself to defraud God of His children, and His children of their God, by the fiercest temptation of their flesh. We are not to suppose that Balaam now threw off the mask and became openly a bad man. It would appear that he still kept up his self-deceit and dissimulation, as if what he was doing were but lawful and right, so that he not only led them into practices of sin, but corrupted and perverted their principles also, persuading them that they might thus hold with God and yet with sin and the flesh.
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 or 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.1 [Note: R. A. Watson, The Book of Numbers, 313.]
3. But retribution came, and swiftly. The due reward of Balaam's works was given him. The death of the righteous was not destined for this corrupting traitor, for this apostate seer. It is no wonder that a little later he is entangled in the doom of those with whom he has made common cause against God; and that, when the Midianites perish beneath the sword of Joshua, he should perish with them. There is something very significant in the brief parenthetic notice which records his doom: “Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.”
So on the blood-stained turf, so amid the routed ranks, so by the pitiless swords of the men whom he had seduced to their ruin, so after the wasted life and desecrated gifts, his blows frustrated, his curses foiled, his name degraded into a by-word, died one who, had he but been faithful to his own best convictions, might have been almost as great as Moses himself. For the hope of a handful of paltry dross he had sold his eternal jewel to the enemy of man, and he had earned the dreadful twofold epitaph which the New Testament inscribes with ceremonious reprobation upon his name. One epitaph is “Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness.” The other is, “Balaam who taught Balak to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication.”
It is to be noted that it is neither by us ascertainable what moments of pure feeling or aspiration may occur to men of minds apparently cold and lost, nor by us to be pronounced through what instruments, and in what strangely occurrent voices, God may choose to communicate good to men. It seems to me that much of what is great, and to all men beneficial, has been wrought by those who neither intended nor knew the good they did; and that many mighty harmonies have been discoursed by instruments that had been dumb or discordant, but that God knew their stops. The Spirit of Prophecy consisted with the avarice of Balaam. Could we spare from its page that parable, which he said, who saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open; though we know that the sword of his punishment was then sharp in its sheath beneath him in the plains of Moab?… Selfish in their industry, unchastened in their wills, ungrateful for the Spirit that is upon them, men may yet be helmed by that Spirit whithersoever the Governor listeth; involuntary instruments they may become of others' good; unwillingly they may bless Israel, but short-coming there will be of their glory, and sure, of their punishment.1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters, ii. (Works, iv. 213).]
