4 He saith, which heareth the words of God, * [. Thy tabernacles, O Israel! 5 How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, 6 As † valleys are they spread forth, 7 8 9 As gardens by the river side, As lign-aloes *which Yahweh hath planted, As cedar trees beside the waters. "Water shall flow from his buckets, And his seed shall be in many waters, And his king shall be higher than "Agag, "God bringeth him forth out of Egypt; He hath as it were the strength of the wild-ox: And smite [them] through with his arrows. † And as a lioness; who shall rouse him up? 10 And Balak's anger was kindled against Balaam, and he smote his hands together: and Balak said unto Balaam, I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, (Rje) behold, thou hast altogether blessed them these II (J) three times. Therefore now flee thou to thy place: I thought to promote thee unto great honor; but, 12 lo, Yahweh § hath kept thee back from honor. And 4Gen. 2: 8f. 5Gen. 49:25. "I Sam. 15: 8ff. 723:22 Gen. 49:9. Gen. 27:29. 17, 37. 1022: *Supply from vs. 16" And knoweth the knowledge of the Most High." As in other J poems the divine appellations are multiplied. † In this and the succeeding line read be, “in,” for ke, “as.” Read with Dillmann welochatzain yimchatz, "and his oppressors will he crush," or else translate "and shall trample upon his (their) arrows." § After xxii. 18 "Yahweh" in Balak's mouth is appropriate. Balaam said unto Balak, "Spake I not also to thy messengers which thou sentest unto me, saying, If 13 Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of Yahweh, to do either good or bad of mine own mind; what Yahweh speaketh, that will I speak? And now, behold, I go unto 14 my people: come, [and] I will advertise thee what this people shall do to thy people 18in the latter days. And he took up his parable, and said, Balaam the son of Beor saith, 15 And the man whose eye was closed saith: He saith, which heareth the words of God, 16 There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, And a sceptre shall rise out of Israel, And shall smite through the corners of Moab, And break down all the sons of tumult. And Edom shall be a possession, 18 Seir also shall be a possession, [which were] his ene mies; While Israel doeth valiantly. And out of Jacob shall one have dominion, 19 And shall destroy the remnant from the city. (Rd) And he looked on Amalek, and took up his parable, and said, 20 Amalek was the first of the nations; But his latter end shall come to destruction. And he looked on the 17Kenite, and took up his parable, and said, 18 Strong is thy dwelling place, 1122:17f. 1216: 28. 17 Jud. 1:16; 4:11. 2 I 13Gen. 49 : 1. 14Vv. 3f. 15Gen. 49: 10; ch. 21: 18. 16Jer. 48: 45. 18 Gen. 49 24. * Read with Sam. and Jer. xlviii. 45, by a minute change of text, “the skull of," parallel to corners (sc. of the head, i. e. “ temples") of preceding line (so Dillmann, Ewald et. al). 22 And thy nest is set in the rock. Nevertheless Kain shall be wasted, Until 19 Asshur shall carry thee away captive. Alas, who shall live when God doeth this? 23 24 But ships [shall come] from the coast of Kittim, 25 And they shall afflict Asshur, and shall afflict Eber, And he also shall come to destruction. (J) 20 And Balaam rose up, and went and returned to his place and Balak also went his way.* 3. Chh. xxv.; xxvii.; xxxiif. THE INHERITANCE OF THE TRIBES BEYOND JORDAN. ANALYSIS. At Shittim, on the east shore of Jordan, Israel falls into idolatry and is punished, xxv. 1-5. Phinehas, son of Eleazar, receives the covenant of the priesthood because of his zeal in slaying one who had taken to wife a Midianite woman; 6-15. Moses receives commandment to ascend mount Abarim and die there. Upon his entreaty Yahweh directs the appointment of Joshua as his successor; 12-23. War is declared against Midian because they had beguiled Israel into uncleanness. Under Joshua's command a force of 12,000 Israelites exterminate Midian without the loss of a man, and return to Moses with enormous booty; ch. xxxi. The tribes of Gad and Reuben appeal to Moses for permission to settle in the conquered lands beyond Jordan. Permission 19II Kings. 15:29. 2oCt. 31:8; Jos. 13: 22, * From vs. 19 on the poem has been supplemented by one or more later hands. Vv. 23f., which differ from the other oracles in having no special object (LXX supply "he looked on Og "), have been added subsequently to the union of J and E, to make the group of seven oracles complete. Vv. (19) 20-22 may be older, but contemplate a later period than that of brilliant triumph represented in 17f. (certainly the Davidic); a period in which the heavy hand of Assyria has been felt. Even Greek interference from Cyprus is anticipated in vs. 24. Vv. (19) 20ff. go beyond the intention of the original writer, which confined itself, vs. 14, to what Israel should do to Moab and Edom. is given them on condition of their participating first with the other tribes in the conquest of Canaan. To this they consent, and receive Gilead, in whose cities their wives, children and possessions are bestowed until their return. List of cities and towns occupied in Gilead, ch. xxxii. An itinerary of Israel's wanderings in the desert, xxxiii. 1-49. The last chapters of Numbers are in unmistakable disorder. The death of Moses, which already at the close of ch. xxvii. is immediately impending, the appointment of Joshua as his successor being expressly related as the final act of Moses preliminary to his death, is obviously entirely out of place; since the war with Midian, the distribution of the inheritances in Gilead, the appointment of the trans-Jordanic cities of refuge, not to mention the entire Deuteronomic legislation, besides several other important transactions, are inserted before Dt. xxxiv., where Moses obeys the command of xxvii. 12ff. and his death actually takes place. . The command, and the charge to Joshua have of course to be related over again after so long an interval, and the paragraph is accordingly repeated in Dt. xxxii. 48ff. The elements of P2 found in chh. xxxiiff. prove that the displacement of ch. xxvii. is not merely due to the insertion of material foreign to this document, but the ch. has been taken from a position after xxxiv., to which its opening paragraph, relating to the inheritance of the daughters of Zelophehad, forms the natural sequel, and has been inserted at this earlier point, perhaps for the sake of bringing in Joshua's installation as leader (cf. vv. 18–23) before the story of the war with Midian (P3), in which he acts as chief, and into closer connection with the directions for distributing the inheritances, which he is to carry out (cf. xxxii. 28). Again, the two parts of ch. xxv. arbitrarily cemented together at vv. 5-6 are manifestly mismated. The story of Israel's idolatry at the Moabite shrine of Beth-peor has not the slightest real connection with the story of miscegenation with Midianite women; (cf. Ex. xxxiv. 16); neither can the " plague," which according to vs. 8f. has been raging in Israel on account of the people's wrong-doing, be identified by any stretch of imagination with the punishment inflicted in vv. 4f. On the contrary, xxxi. 16 points to a story of P2, now obliterated, in which the connection with Midianitish women at Beth-peor and consequent plague was ascribed to the counsel of Balaam. Accordingly it is Midian and not Moab on whom the Israelites are directed to avenge themselves in vv. 16-18a. Vs. 18b is the work of the interpolator of ch. xxxi. (see note in loc.); but it is apparent from the reference of P2 in xxxii. 4, that this extravagant midrash only takes the place of an original account by P2 of the conquest of the trans-Jordanic territory from Midian. On account of this connection with chh. xxxif., and which Rp seems to follow, our third subdivision is made to include ch. xxv., though the JE elements of the chapter have very likely nothing to do with the inheritance of the tribes beyond Jordan. J's may even possibly be connected with the Balaam episode. This brief paragraph, which the subject, style and language as well as the reference in Dt. iv. 3 prove to belong in JE, seems to be duplicate (see note on vs. 4) but is difficult to analyze. From the location (cf. Jos. ii. 1; iii. 1, E; ct. xxi. 20, J) vs. 1a would seem to be from E; but E's conception of the relation of Moab to Israel is one of non-intercourse, and Dt. xxiii. 5ff. and Jos. xxiv. 9 make no allusion to such plots. His idea of the danger to Israel appears in Jud. and Sam. especially as temptation to idolatry pure and simple. In J," whoredom," vs. 1b; Ex. xxxiv. 15, is part of the danger. Now vs. 3 manifestly stands connected with vs. 5, which with any translation is hard to reconcile with vs. 4, and the “ judges" of Israel (vs. 5) are one of the great features of E (cf. Ex. xviii.; Num. xi. 16ff. and Jud. passim). The most probable conclusion is that we have here fragments of both J and E, the former possibly connected with the curious reference to “ elders of Midian" in J's Balaam story, and the remarkable difference in the priestly representation of the character of Balaam. The character of ch. xxxi. is self-evident, and we may therefore spare ourselves the disagreeable task of analyzing it in detail. The chapter depends throughout on P2, but is of considerably later origin, as appears from the style and language, the elaborate specification of the numbers and amount of spoil, cf. Ex. xxxviii. 24ff (P3), and the independent appearance of the high priest, vv. 21ff., as developer and expounder of Mosaic law. Driver appropriately reiterates the characterization of Dillmann: “Though cast into narrative form, the ch. has really a legislative object, viz. to prescribe a principle for the distribution of booty taken in war [cf. I Sam. xxx. 18-25]. Of the place, circumstances, and other details of the war we learn nothing; we are told only the issue, how, viz., 12,000 Israelite warriors, without losing a man (vs. 49), slew all the males and married women of Midian, took captive 32,000 virgins, and brought back 800,000 head of cattle, besides other booty. In the high figures, and absence of specific details, the narrative resembles the descriptions of wars in the Chronicles or in Jud. xx.” The hand of Rp is discernible in vs. 2b and 16. Ch. xxxii. is made extremely difficult of analysis by the incoming of Rd, who seems to have rewritten vv. 8-15 and perhaps made other alterations in this chapter. It is in fact intimately connected with Jos. xxii., a narrative derived in its present form almost wholly from the hand |