Apostasy at the Jordan
405
The judgments visited upon Israel for their sin at Shittim, destroyed
the survivors of that vast company, who, nearly forty years before, had
incurred the sentence, “They shall surely die in the wilderness.” The
numbering of the people by divine direction, during their encampment
on the plains of Jordan, showed that “of them whom Moses and Aaron
the priest numbered, when they numbered the children of Israel in the
wilderness of Sinai, ... there was not left a man of them, save Caleb
the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.”
Numbers 26:64,
65
.
God had sent judgments upon Israel for yielding to the enticements
of the Midianites; but the tempters were not to escape the wrath of
divine justice. The Amalekites, who had attacked Israel at Rephidim,
falling upon those who were faint and weary behind the host, were
not punished till long after; but the Midianites who seduced them into
sin were speedily made to feel God’s judgments, as being the more
dangerous enemies. “Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites”
(
Numbers 31:2
), was the command of God to Moses; “afterward shalt
thou be gathered unto thy people.” This mandate was immediately
obeyed. One thousand men were chosen from each of the tribes and
sent out under the leadership of Phinehas. “And they warred against
the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses.... And they slew the
kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; ... five kings
of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.”
Verses 7, 8
. The women also, who had been made captives by the
attacking army, were put to death at the command of Moses, as the
most guilty and most dangerous of the foes of Israel.
Such was the end of them that devised mischief against God’s
people. Says the psalmist: “The heathen are sunk down in the pit that
they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.”
Psalm
9:15
. “For the Lord will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake
His inheritance. But judgment shall return unto righteousness.” When
men “gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous,” the
Lord “shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off
in their own wickedness.”
Psalm 94:14, 15, 21, 23
.
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When Balaam was called to curse the Hebrews he could not, by
all his enchantments, bring evil upon them; for the Lord had not
“beheld iniquity in Jacob,” neither had He “seen perverseness in Israel.”
Numbers 23:21, 23
. But when through yielding to temptation they