It is not worth while to delay over Balaam's rhapsodies, except to note their extreme inaccuracy. "God is not a man that he should lie" (Numbers xxiii,, 19); yet "I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet" (Ezech. xiv., 9). "Nor the son of man that he should repent" (Numbers xxiii., 19); yet "it repented the Lord that he had made man" (Gen. vi., 6). "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel" (Numbers xxiii., 21); yet, "I have seen this people, and behold it is a stiff-necked people;" "how long will this people provoke me?" (Exodus xxxii., 9, and Numbers xiv., 11). This declaration is the more startling when we find Moses- whose acquaintance with the people was more intimate than that of Balaam-saying: "Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness; from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against the Lord.... Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you" (Deut. ix., 7 and 24). It is needless to accumulate these contradictory statements, all of which we are commanded to believe on peril of damnation.
Immediately after Balaam's declaration of Israel's holiness, we read how the people reverted to idolatry, and how "the anger of the Lord was kindled against them" (Numbers xxv., 3). Some more murders were committed to pacify Jahveh, and he himself slew 24,000 by a plague.
In Numbers xxxi. we have one of the most horrible stories related even in the Bible, the story of the slaughter of the Midianites. Jahveh sent his tribes against this unhappy race, and, after their usual wicked fashion, they "slew all the males." Moved, however, by an unwonted touch of pity, they "took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones," and brought them alive back to their camp. Moses, Jahveh's friend, "was wroth with the officers of the host" for their unworthy humanity, and shrieked out in his rage: "Have ye saved all the women alive?" And then he commanded them to "kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman" that had been married, "but all the women children that" were virgins "keep alive for yourselves." This bloodthirsty and loathsome command is of "divine authority." It is blasphemy to deny that it was god-given. Yet what of the blasphemy that ascribes an order so fiendish to "the God of the spirits of all flesh?" These baby boys and prattling children, kill every one; these mothers and matrons of Midian, murder them one after another. Such is the command of Jahveh, who said: "Thou shalt not kill." And these fair and pure maidens, these helpless women-children, whose natural guardians ye have slain, keep these for the satisfactions of your passions. Such is the command of Jahveh, who said: "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
Some of these fair girls were claimed as "the Lord's tribute," 352 in all. These were handed over to the Levites, and small doubt can be felt as to their fate.
To add a touch of the comic to this tragic scene, we learn that after all the fighting and the slaughter, not one solitary Israelite was missing, while the Midianitish nation, of which not a male was left alive, turns up again later as merrily as though it had never been destroyed, and "prevailed against Israel, and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strongholds" (Judges vi., 2).
The book of Deuteronomy is awkward for the true believer, because it is a recital of the story related in the preceding book, and constantly contradicts the previous narrative. Thus Moses commands Israel to make no likeness or similitude of Jahveh on the ground that when he spake to them "out of the midst of the fire," "ye heard the voice of the words but saw no similitude" (Deut. iv., 12); yet turning back we read that seventy-four of them "saw the god of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God" (Ex. xxiv., 10,11). It can scarcely be pretended that when they saw a visible being with "feet" and a "hand," they "saw no similitude."
In Deut. v., 15, the reason for keeping holy the sabbath day is different from the reason given in Ex. xx., 11. Both of these are given as the very words of Jahveh, spoken from "Horeb" or "Sinai." One of the versions must be inaccurate, yet it is blasphemy to deny either. In Deut. v., 22, Moses says that after the ten commandments "he added no more." In Exodus he added a large number of other commands (see xx.-xxiii.).
We learn in Deut. viii., 4, that during the forty years wasted in the wilderness "thy raiment waxed not old upon thee." This was very satisfactory for the adults, but what happened to the growing children? The raiment of a week-old baby can scarcely have been suitable to the man of forty; did the clothes grow with the body, and as the numbers of the people increased very much during the forty years, were new clothes born as well as new babies? If such questions are regarded as blasphemous, I can only answer that they are suggested by Moses' assertion of the remarkable durability of the raiment, and raiment that did not become old might surely also grow and reproduce itself. Once begin miracle-working on old clothes, and none can say how far it may go.
It is blasphemy to assert that it is wrong to swear, for the Bible commands: "Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God.... and swear by his name" (Deut. x., 20). It is blasphemy to assert that it is right to swear, for the Bible commands: "Swear not at all" (Matt, v., 34).
Deuteronomy xiii., from the first verse to the last, is a disgrace to the book in which it is contained, and a scandal to the community which permits it to be circulated as of divine authority. Yet it is blasphemy to attack it and to show its horrible atrocity. If a prophet or dreamer arise and try to turn away the Hebrews from Jahveh, then they are told: "The Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God" (v. 3). Yet, although it is Jahveh's own doing, that unfortunate "prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death" (v. 5). The same fate is to befall "thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul" (v. 6), if such try to turn any away from Jahveh's worship; with a refinement of cruelty, devilish in its wickedness, "thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death" (v. 9). The wife, passionately loved, is to see her husband, in whose bosom she has lain, raise his hand against her, foremost of a howling mob, greedy for her blood. The daughter is to clasp her father's knees in vain; he must strike her down as she clings to him in her agony. The trusting and trusted friend is to be betrayed to the slaughterers, and the hand most closely grasped in love is to be the first to catch up the heavy stone and to beat out the faithful life. And it is blasphemy to cry out against this horror, but not blasphemy to ascribe its invention to the god "whose tender mercy is over all his works."