From the Rejection of That Generation to the Death of Moses - Flavius Josephus

twice besides that first time already mentioned, which yet is not very
probable; cannot now be certainly determined. In the mean time, all
other copies have three such attempts of Balaam to curse them in the
present history.
4. Such a large and distinct account of this perversion of the Israelites by
the Midianite women, of which our other copies give us but short
intimations, Numbers 31:16 2 Peter 2:15; Jude 11; Revelation 2:14, is
preserved, as Reland informs us, in the Samaritan Chronicle, in Philo,
and in other writings of the Jews, as well as here by Josephus.
5. This grand maxim, That God's people of Israel could never be hurt nor
destroyed, but by drawing them to sin against God, appears to be true,
by the entire history of that people, both in the Bible and in Josephus;
and is often taken notice of in them both. See in particular a most
remarkable Ammonite testimony to this purpose, Judith 5:5-21.
6. What Josephus here puts into the mouths of these Midianite women,
who came to entice the Israelites to lewdness and idolatry, viz. that their
worship of the God of Israel, in opposition to their idol gods, implied
their living according to the holy laws which the true God had given
them by Moses, in opposition to those impure laws which were observed
under their false gods, well deserves our consideration; and gives us a
substantial reason for the great concern that was ever shown under the
law of Moses to preserve the Israelites from idolatry, and in the worship
of the true God; it being of no less consequence than, Whether God's
people should be governed by the holy laws of the true God, or by the
impure laws derived from demons, under the pagan idolatry.
7. The mistake in all Josephus's copies, Greek and Latin which have here
fourteen thousand instead of twenty-four thousand, is so flagrant, that
our very learned editors, Bernard and Hudson, have put the latter
number directly into the text. I choose rather to put it in brackets.
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