Till all the rest should
have fallen in the wilderness, and a better race have been trained up,
God would not help them to take possession. In their wilfulness they
tried to advance, and were defeated, and thus were obliged to endure
their forty years' desert wandering.
Even Moses had his patience worn out by their fretful faithlessness,
and committed an act of disobedience, for which he was sentenced not to
enter the land, but to die on the borders after one sight of the promise
of his fathers. Under him, however, began the work of conquest; the rich
pasture lands of Gilead and Basan were subdued, and the tribes of Reuben
and Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, were permitted to take these as
their inheritance, though beyond the proper boundary, the Jordan. The
Moabites took alarm, though these, as descended from Abraham's nephew
Lot, were to be left unharmed; and their king, Balak, sent, as it
appears, even to Mesopotamia for Balaam, a true prophet, though a guilty
man, in hopes that he would bring down the curse of God on them. Balaam,
greedy of reward, forced, as it were, consent from God to go to Balak,
though warned that his words would not be in his own power.
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