Although Balaam had not been able to fulfil Balak's wish and curse
Israel, still he did not leave him before giving him advice as to how
he might bring ruin to Israel, saying: "The God of this people loathes
unchastity; but they are very eager to possess linen garments. Pitch
tents, then, and at their entrances have old women offer these articles
for sale. Induce them in this way to enter the interior of the tents
where they will be surprised by young harlots, who will seduce them to
unchastity, so that God may punish them for their sin." [785]
"Throw the stick up in the air it will always return to its original
place." The Moabite nation that owes its existence to the illegal
relations of Lot with his daughter could not deny its origin, and
followed Balaam's counsel to tempt Israel to unchastity. They pitched
tents, filled them with pretty women, whom they provided with valuable
things, and had old women take up their posts at the doors of the
tents, whose task it was to lure the passing Israelites into the
interior. If an Israelite passed to buy something of the Moabites, the
old women at the entrance to the tent would thus address him, "Dost
thou not wish to buy linen garments that were made in Bet-Shan?" Then
they would show him a sample of the goods, and name the price, and
finally add, "Go within, and thou wilt see wares still more beautiful."
If he went within, he was received by a young woman who was richly
adorned and perfumed, who would at first set for him a price much lower
than the value of the goods, and then invite him to do as if he were at
home, and to choose the article he liked best. While he sat there, he
was treated with wine, and the young woman invited him to drink with
the words: "Why do we love ye while you hate us? Are we not all
descendants of one man? Was not Terah our ancestor as much as yours? If
thou wilt not eat of our sacrifices or what we have cooked, here are
calves and fowl that thou mayest slaughter in accordance with thy law."
But as soon as the Israelite had allowed himself to be persuaded to
drink, he was absolutely in the hands of the shameless woman.
Intoxicated with wine, his passion for the woman was soon kindled, but
she agreed to satisfy his desires only after he had first worshipped
Peor, the god of the Moabites. Now the worship of this idol consisted
in nothing else than the complete baring of the body, hence the
Israelites, seeing no evil in it, declared themselves willing to follow
the summons of the Moabite women; and in this way they were seduced
both to unchastity and to idolatry by the Moabite women. At first the
men were ashamed and committed this whoredom with the Moabite women in
secret, but they soon lost this feeling of shame and betook themselves
two by two to their lewd actions. [786]
Israel's moral degeneration is to be partly explained by this, that the
place where they found themselves was apt to tempt them to lewdness.
For there are springs whose waters have various effects upon those who
partake of them. One kind of water strengthens, another weakens; one
makes beautiful, another makes ugly; one makes chaste, another brings
about lewdness. Now there was in Shittim, where the Israelites then
dwelt, the "Well of Lewdness," out of which the inhabitants of Sodom
had erstwhile fetched water, but from which, since the destruction of
the sinful cities, no one had drunk, and for this reason the people had
until then been chaste. But Israel, as soon as they tasted of this
water, gave up their chaste manner of life. This disastrous spring will
lose its force only in the Messianic time when God will cause it to dry
up. [787]