ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

The Oracles of BaJaam.
This is the oracle of Balaam "Bar-Beor,
Rune of the man whose eyes are now closing,
Utterance of him who lists to God's sentence,
And looks on the vision sent by the Almighty,
Falling, and having the inner sight opened:
I see him, but not in the present;
I behold him, but still in the future:
A Star shall arise out of Jacob, [8)
And a Sceptre be wielded in Israel,
That shall smite through the borders of Moab
Aud crush all the children of tumult.
This is not all, but it is enough, for here we reach the tnte
climax. Let us observe in passing, how every effort of Balak
sinks him deeper in the mire of fate, how, as in CEdipus Rex,
successive blows fall upon the king, each heavier than the last.
He sought to have a curse lawtched upon the enemy people, and
a blessing is wafted instead. He would have been spared the
knowledge of more if he had now let Balaam go home, but he
persisted in trying to gain his end, and like a lightning flash it is
revealed to him that his enemy will not simply be himself prosperous,
but he will also be formidable and fatal to somebody.
Balak might have gone away hoping that it would be the Amalekites,
Kenites, or some other of the nwnerous tribes along the
Mediterranean or farther inland, but he continues his desperate
struggles, and a lurid flash outlines the further fact that Israel
shall crush a nation that has cursed it. There is little chance to
err now, yet Balak might have clung to delusion that the already
defeated Amorites, who surely had filled the air with curses,
were to be smitten again, and that the reference was to them.
But he madly raved and railed, and the lightning flashed once
more, and lo, written upon the heavens was the doom of MOAB.
He has gotten his own nation cursed!
Finally, and more to the point of the present paper, we have
reached an interesting conclusion, one which is hardly affected
by questions how far the tale of Balaam is history, and how far
tradition which would equally reflect customary facts in the experiences
of a people. And that conclusion is that the Biblical
[8) Generally supposed to refer to David, afterward conqueror of the
Moabites.
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