CHAPTER XXXVI.

Balak's disappointment. The highest mountains supposed by the Canaanites to be under the dominion of certain divinities. Balak's reliance upon their interference. Revolting rites performed in their groves, and upon their hill-altars. Seven a sacred number among the Hebrews. Sacrifices to the seven planets. Balaam's apology to Balak for his failure.

WHEN Balaam had delivered his second prophecy, the king of Moab, disappointed at his expectations being again defeated, desired that if the prophet did not curse his enemies, he would at least refrain from blessing them. Balaam reminded him of what he had said before he attempted to perform the requisition of this pusillanimous monarch, that he could only do on this or any similar occasion, what the Lord should permit, and that, therefore, it would be unreasonable to blame him, should the issue prove unfavourable. Balak, however, still hoping that his desire might be accomplished, conducted Balaam to the summit of mount Peor, supposed to be the peak upon which the celebrated temple, dedicated to Baal-Peor, was erected, and in which the most abominabl rites were performed.

The idea of local

Thus Balak might hitherto been with

Dodd's note upon the words, the words, “ I will bring thee unto another place," Numbers xxiii. 27, is well worth introducing here. "As the Syrians imagined that some gods were powerful on the hills who could do nothing in the plains,* so it seems there was such a conceit at this time in these countries, that some gods had more power on one hill than another. deities was very general. imagine that his god had held by the God of Israel from granting his desire, but might be more powerful in another place. Low as were the conceptions of those idolaters respecting their deities, do we not see the same still prevail in the Romish church, where much more virtue is attributed to some images of the blessed Virgin than to others? for which reason devotees flock in greater numbers to the places where such images are found?” Peor, the hill to which Balaam was conducted by Balak, after the latter's two disappointments, is supposed to have been one of the peaks of Abarim, near to which were Nebo and Pisgah. Upon this mountain it is conjectured that there was a celebrated temple, dedicated to Baal-Peor, the idol of turpitude, as he is designated by Origen. Father Simon imagines that this hill was called after that obscene idol, as the heathens had their Jupiter Olympius, Apollo Clarius, Mercurius Cyllenius, &c., names derived from the places where their temples stood. Maius and Cocceius + think it imports a naked height, or, as we say, an open pros

See 1 Kings xx. 23, 28.

+ Lex. p. 100.

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2 K

pect, or a mountain free from impediments; -that which stands unsheltered, plainly to be seen; the vertex of a high hill. It was the name of a mountain standing very favourably for a distant prospect; "a prospect station in an open place" (Numbers xxiii. 28.)

The highest mountains were imagined by the Canaanites generally to be under the exclusive dominion of certain divinities, who there exereised an uncontrolled power; among these BaalPeor is supposed to have held the pre-eminence, especially by the Moabites and Midianites. Under the impression of such a belief, Balak hoped that although the seer of Mesopotamia had been unsuccessful in two instances, the presiding divinity of Peor might, nevertheless, be more propitious. For this reason, the prophet was conducted to the summit of that hill, whence he could behold the vast array of the Israelitish army encamped upon the plain beneath. The temples dedicated to the heathen deities were mostly erected upon the tops of mountains. Being thus remote from the habitations of men, and, therefore, not places of general concourse, they became not only scenes of the grossest idolatries, but likewise of the most revolting licentiousness; and were consequently destroyed by the zeal of Hezekiah and other pious princes. Of the nature of the obscene rites performed in those unhallowed fanes, a tolerably correct idea may be formed by the abominations practised at this day in the Hindoo pagodas. Nothing can exceed the obscenity daily witnessed within the penetralia of those

profaned sanctuaries. There is a famous temple at Tirupati, in the Carnatic, which sterile women frequent in crowds to obtain children from the god Vencata Ramana, who presides over this abominable pest-house of idolatry. Here, on their arrival, the unhappy dupes of their own weak credulity immediately apply to the brahmins, to whom they disclose the object of their pilgrimage. Those hoary, or rather bald priests, for their crowns are shaved, tell the deluded suppliants at the shrine of a most bestial superstition that they must pass the night in the temple, and expect with a holy reliance the visitation of its presiding divinity. During the solemn silence and profound darkness of night, the brahmins visit the beguiled votaries, and in due time disappear. In the morning, having made the necessary inquiries, they congratulate their besotted victims upon the benignant reception they have met with from the allpowerful Vencata Ramana; and then, receiving from them rich offerings for the shrine of that unconscious divinity, dismiss them with the strongest assurances that the object of their pious pilgrimage will shortly be accomplished. The women, strong in faith, return to their husbands, who have sanctioned their visit to this polluted temple, fully assured that they have had intercourse with its god, who has vouchsafed to remove from them the curse of barrenness, to a Hindoo woman the greatest imaginable evil of the human condition.* There are many other rites

See Dubois' Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India, pp. 410, 411.

exhibited in Hindoo pagodas, so atrociously obscene that they could not be recorded in print without startling even the most depraved mind; but if what has been stated by learned men of the rites peculiar to the temple of BaalPeor be true, they, if possible, exceeded in horrible bestiality those to which I have alluded.

When Balak and Balaam reached the summit of Peor, the altars were erected as before, and the holocausts repeated. Although, however, these three septenary sacrifices are stated to have followed each other, without any space of time being mentioned as having elapsed between them, we are not to suppose that they actually took place on the same day. There was, in all probability, an interval of at least one day allowed to intervene betwixt each of the three septenary offerings, as the distance of the hills from the city, the difficulty of ascent, the actual immolation of the victims, must have occupied, in each case, many hours; though, for the sake of brevity in the narrative, the events are mentioned as following each other in immediate succession, the historian feeling that there was no necessity to enter into details apart from the immediate facts of the history, these being the only essential matters which it was necessary to record. It is clear that if Moses had given a copious statement of all those events of which his narrative supplies only a summary account, the portion of Scripture contributed by him would have swelled into as many volumes as it now contains sections, and thus really have precluded the general reading of Holy Writ; such a