Ib. p. 160.
Some indeed have sought the star and the sceptre of Balaam's prophecy, where they cannot well be found, in the reign of David; for though a sceptre might be there, the star properly is not.
Surely this is a very weak reason. A far better is, I think, suggested by the words,
I shall see him—I shall behold him
;—which in no intelligible sense could be true of Balaam relatively to David.
Ib. p. 162.
The Israelites could not endure the voice and fire of Mount Sinai. They asked an intermediate messenger between God and them, who should temper the awfulness of his voice, and impart to them his will in a milder way.
Deut
. xviii. 15. Is the following argument worthy our consideration? If, as the learned Eichhorn, Paulus of Jena, and others of their school, have asserted, Moses waited forty days for a tempest, and then, by the assistance of the natural magic he had learned in the temple of Isis,