Introduction
THE LAST UTTERANCES OF BALAAM.
In this chapter the wonderful episode of Balaam as a public soothsayer comes to an end. Under the inspiration of the Spirit of God he predicts the prosperity of Israel, for which he is angrily dismissed by Balak. Yet he persists in prophesying of the Star of Jacob and the overthrow of certain nations, Israel’s enemies.
CONCLUDING NOTES.
(1.) At this point, where Balaam disappears from the public stage on which he has figured so conspicuously as a prophet, it is proper to note the marvellous contradictions combined in his character, which has been portrayed in the last three chapters with that fineness of touch which has rendered it an instructive study for the critical theologians and refined moralists of the most recent ages of the Church. Bishop Butler, in his admirable sermon on Balaam, regards him as a striking embodiment and illustration of that self-deception which persuades the wicked man in every case that the sin which he commits may be brought within the sanctions of conscience and the approval of God’s revealed will.
(2.) Dr. Newman, of Oxford, has drawn an admonitory lesson from this character by delineating “the dark shade cast over a noble course by standing always on the ladder of advancement, and by the suspense of a worldly ambition never satisfied.” Dr. Arnold presents this great soothsayer as a striking type of a class of men by no means extinct in our times, in whom the purest forms of religious belief and the loftiest ideals of moral rectitude (Micah 6:5-8) are combined with a life immeasurably below them.
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