Balaam is brought to several hilltops around Jericho and the Jordan river where he could see the Israelite camp so that he could curse them. Much to the chagrin of Balak and his people, Balaam kept blessing the Israelites every time he opened his mouth to prophecy. He kept trying to explain that he doesn’t have any power to bless or curse anybody, but only repeat what God says. After seven different ceremonies, Balaam has blessed Israel three times and systematically cursed every one of the other nations in the area, saying that Israel is going to destroy them.
I think that at least some of these leaders he’s talking to must be descendants of Ishmael. I’d like to see a chart or something that lays that out.
While the Israelites are camped out near the Moabites, some of the men begin fraternizing with Moabite women. I’m not sure if that’s allowed under the law or not, since the Moabite women aren’t under the dominion of any Israelite men, I’m not sure that there’s any rules against fornicating with them,
The foreign women convince Israelite men to worship their Moabite Gods though, which infuriates God. God sends an awful plague until Moses declares that every man who’s been consorting with the Moabites must be put to death. While everyone’s praying about this around the entrance to the tent of meeting, someone who didn’t get the memo actually brings a Moabite woman into camp. Eleazer sees them and grabs a spear. He follows them all the way to the mans tent and then stabs the spear through the both of them.
God makes a covenant with Eleazer to make his line a holy line of priests because his zeal was most comparable to the Lord’s zeal when it comes to enforcing the law.
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