The Story of the Bible

There was danger that all the people would be led into sin. And God sent a plague of death upon the people, and many died. Then Moses took the men who were leading Israel into sin, and put them to death. And after this the Israelites made war upon the Moabites, and their neighbors, the Midianites, who were joined with them. They beat them in a great battle, and killed many of them. And among the men of Moab they found Balaam the prophet; and they killed him also, because he had given advice to the Moabites which brought harm to Israel.

It would have been better for Balaam to have stayed at home, and not to have come when King Balak called him; or it would have been well for him to have gone back to his home when the angel met him. He might then have lived in honor; but he knew God's will, and tried to go against it, and died in disgrace among the enemies of God's people.

How Moses Looked upon the Promised Land

Numbers xxvi: 1 to 4, 63 to 65; xxxii: 1 to 42; Deuteronomy xxxi: 1, to xxxiv: 12.

While the Israelites were in their camp on the plain beside the river Jordan, at the foot of the mountains of Moab, God told Moses to count the number of the men who were old enough and strong enough to go forth to war. And Moses caused the men to be counted who were above twenty years of age, and found them to be a little more than six hundred thousand in number. Besides these were the women and children.

And among them all were only three men who were above sixty years of age, men who had been more than twenty years old forty years before, when the Israelites came out of Egypt. The men who had been afraid to enter the land of Canaan, when they were at Kadesh-barnea the first time (see Story Thirty), had all died. Some of them had been slain by the enemies in war; some had died in the wilderness during the forty years; some had perished by the plague; some had been bitten by the fiery serpents. Of all those who had come out of Egypt as men, the only ones living were Moses, and Joshua, and Caleb. Moses was not a hundred and twenty years old. He had lived forty years as a prince in Egypt, forty years as a shepherd in Midian, and forty years as the leader of Israel in the wilderness. But although he was so very old, God had kept his strength. His eyes were as bright, his mind was as clear, and his arm and heart were as strong as they had been when he was a young man.

The people of Israel had now full possession of all the land on the east of the river Jordan, from the brook Arnon up to the great Mount Hermon. Much of this land was well fitted for pasture; for grass was green and rich, and there were many streams of water. There were two of the twelve tribes, and half of another tribe, whose people had great flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of cattle. These were the tribes which had sprung from Reuben and Gad, the sons of Jacob, and half of the tribe of Manasseh, the son of Joseph. For there were two tribes that had sprung from Joseph, his descendants, the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh.

The men of Reuben, Gad, and half the men of Manasseh came to Moses, and said:

"The land on this side of the river is good for the feeding of sheep and cattle; and we are shepherds and herdsmen. Cannot we have our possessions on this side of the river, and give all the land beyond the river to our brothers of the other tribes?"

Moses was not pleased at this; for he thought that the men of these tribes wished to have their home at once in order to avoid going to war with the rest of the tribes; and this may have been in the minds.

So Moses said to them:

"Shall your brothers of the other tribes go to the war? And shall you sit here in your own land, and not help them? That would be wicked, and would displease the Lord your God." Then the men of the two tribes and the half-tribe came again to Moses, and said to him:

"We will build sheepfolds here for our sheep, and we will choose some cities to place our wives and our children in; but we ourselves will go armed with our brothers of the other tribes, and will help them to take the land on the other side of the Jordan. We will not come back to this side of the river until the war is over, and our brothers have taken their shares of the land, each tribe its own part; and we will take no part on the other side of the river, because our place has been given to us here. And when the land is all won and divided, then we will come back here to our wives and our children."