Hitherto, then, although the Elders of Midian were concerned in inviting the Prophet from Mesopotamia, it does not appear that they had any intercourse whatever with him on their own account-Balak and the Moabites had engrossed all his attention. The subject is now discontinued: Balak disappears, gone, as we may suppose, to his own country again, to Pethor, in Mesopotamia, for he had expressly said on parting, Behold, I go unto my people."* Meanwhile the historian pursues his onward course, and details, through several long chapters, the abandoned profligacy of the Israelites, the numbering of them according to their families, the method by which their portions were to be assigned in the land of promise, the laws of inheritance, the choice and appointment of a successor, * Numbers, xxiv. 14.

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a series of offerings and festivals of various kinds, more or less important, the nature and obligation of vows, and the different complexion they assumed under different circumstances enumerated, and then, (as it often happens in the history of Moses, where a battle or a rebellion perhaps interrupts a catalogue of rites and ceremonies,) then, I say, comes an account of an attack made upon the Midianites in revenge for their having seduced the people of Israel by the wiles of their women. So " they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain, viz. Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian ;" and lastly, there is added, what we might not perhaps have been prepared for, "Balaam also, the son of Beor, they slew with the sword."*

* Numbers, xxxi. 8.

It seems then, but how incidentally! that the Prophet did not, after all, return to Mesopotamia, as we had supposed. Now this coincides in a very satisfactory manner with the circumstances under which, we have seen, Balaam was invited from Pethor. For the deputation, which then waited on him, did not consist of Moabites exclusively, but of Midianites also. When dismissed, therefore, in disgust by the Moabites, he would not return to Mesopotamia until he had paid his visit to the Midianites, who were equally concerned in bringing him where he was. Had the details of his achievements in Midian been given, as those in Moab are given, they might have been as numerous, as important, and as interesting. One thing only, however, we are told, that by the counsel which he suggested during this visit concerning the matter of Peor,

and which he probably thought was the most likely counsel to alienate the Israelites from God, and to make Him curse instead of blessing them, he caused the children of Israel to commit the trespass he anticipated, and to fall into the trap which he had provided for them. Unluckily for him, however, his stay amongst the Midianites was unseasonably protracted, and Moses coming upon them, as we have seen, by command of God, slew them and him together. The undesigned coincidence lies in the Elders of Moab and the Elders of Midian going to Balaam; in Midian being then mentioned no more, till Balaam, having been sent away from Moab, apparently that he might go home, is subsequently found a corpse amongst the slaughtered Midianites.

XXIII.

In the consequences which followed from this evil counsel of Balaam, I fancy I discover another instance of coincidence without design. It is this.-As a punishment for the sin of the Israelites in partaking of the worship of Baal-Peor, God is said to have sent a Plague upon them. Who were the leaders in this defection from the Almighty, and in this shameless adoption of the abomination of the Moabites, is not disclosed nor indeed whether any one tribe were more guilty before God than the rest-only it is said that the number of "those who died in the Plague was twenty and four thousand."* I read, however, that the name of a certain Israelite that was slain on that occasion, (who in the

* Numbers, xxv. 9.