Balak Leads Balaam to Peor for a Future Sin

Balaam came down off the second ridge with a blessing in his mouth that he had not meant to say.

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Twice now he had left the altars and gone out by himself to look for an omen. Both times he told himself the same thing on the walk: perhaps the Holy One will happen to meet me out here, perhaps the smoke of seven bullocks and seven rams has pleased Him, perhaps He will hand over the permission and let me earn what Balak is paying for. Both times he came back and blessed Israel in front of the man who had hired him to curse them.

Balak Picks the Last Mountain

Balak was not just a frightened king with a treasury. He was a great diviner himself, and his sight ran forward into years he would not live to see. Somewhere out in that forward looking he had found a day when Israel would bow down to Peor. He had watched the anger rise in heaven over that bowing.

So he did not choose the next summit for its view.

He took the seer by the arm and walked him up Peor, onto the ground of a sin nobody had committed yet. Stand a curse where the people are going to fall, and perhaps it catches there. Borrow tomorrow's shame to win today's war.

"Perhaps it will be right in the eyes of God," Balak said at the top, "and He will give you leave to curse them for me."

Nothing Answered on the Summit

The wind up there was thin and the view ran a long way, and Balak pointed as if geography were an argument. Here. Strike them here, where the future is soft.

Balaam built the altars again. He laid on the bullock and the ram again. He waited.

No door opened. The permission Balak had paid three mountains for did not arrive, and the hired seer standing on the exact ground chosen for Israel's ruin opened his mouth and blessed them.

Silver, altars, and prophecy itself, and the king of Moab was holding nothing.

He Set His Face Toward the Wilderness

After that Balaam stopped hunting omens. Twice was the whole experiment and the experiment was finished. Sacrifice had not bought a license. Flattery had not bought one. Balak's foresight had not bought one either.

So he turned his face away from the tents, toward the wilderness behind them.

Not for a better angle on the camp. For the sand, and for the thing that had happened out on it. He would raise the calf. He would set the gold and the dancing and that ruined morning in front of the Holy One and let the memory do the work his mouth could not do. A curse has to be granted. An accusation only has to be filed.

The Accuser Got Nothing Either

The calf did not move heaven. The One who had already turned three curses into blessings was not going to be steered by a hired man holding up an old sin, any more than by a king who had scouted out a future one.

Balaam saw, against everything he was being paid to see, that it was good in the eyes of the Holy One to bless Israel, and he did not go out to the omens a third time.

Below Peor the tents held their pattern, square by square, and not one of them had shifted for anything said on the mountain. Balak came down the trail behind his seer with empty hands. The peak he had chosen so cleverly went on standing over the plain, waiting for a generation that had not been born yet.