and which he probably thought was the most likely counsel to alienate the Israelites from God, and to make Him curse instead of blessing them, he caused the children of Israel to commit the trespass he anticipated, and to fall into the trap which he had provided for them. Unluckily for him, however, his stay amongst the Midianites was unseasonably protracted, and Moses coming upon them, as we have seen, by command of God, slew them and him together. The undesigned coincidence lies in the Elders of Moab and the Elders of Midian going to Balaam; in Midian being then mentioned no more, till Balaam, having been sent away from Moab, apparently that he might go home, is subsequently found a corpse amongst the slaughtered Midianites.

XXIII.

IN the consequences which followed from this evil counsel of Balaam, I fancy I discover another instance of coincidence without design. It is this. As a punishment for the sin of the Israelites in partaking of the worship of Baal-Peor, God is said to have sent a Plague upon them. Who were the leaders in this defection from the Almighty, and in this shameless adoption of the abomination of the Moabites, is not disclosed -nor indeed whether any one tribe were more guilty before God than the rest-only it is said that the number of "those who died in the Plague was twenty and four thousand."* I read, however, that the name of a certain Israelite that was slain on that occasion, (who in the * Numbers, xxv. 9.

general humiliation and mourning defied, as it were, the vengeance of the most High, and determined, at all hazards, to continue in the lusts to which the idolatry had led,) I read, I say, that " the name of this Israelite that was slain, even that was slain with the Midianitish woman, was Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a chief house among the Simeonites."* And very

great importance is attached to this act of summary punishment-as though this one offender, a prince of a chief house of his tribe, was a representative of the offence of many-for on Phinehas, in his holy indignation, putting him to instant death, the Plague ceased. "So the Plague was stayed from the children of Israel."+

Shortly after this a census of the people is taken. All the tribes are numbered, and + Ibid. xxv. 8.

* Numbers, xxv. 14.

a separate account is given of each. Now in this I observe the following particular that, although on comparing this census with the one which had been made nearly forty years before at Sinai, it appears that the majority of the tribes had meanwhile increased in numbers, and none of them very materially diminished,* the tribe of Simeon had lost almost two-thirds of its whole body, being reduced from " fifty-nine thousand and three hundred,"† to “ twentytwo thousand and two hundred."+ reason is assigned for this extraordinary depopulation of this one tribe-no hint whatever is given as to its eminence in suffering above its fellows. Nor can I

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No

pretend to say that we can detect the reason with any certainty of being right, though

* Compare Numbers, 1, and Numbers, 26.

Numbers, i. 23.

† Ibid. xxvi. 14.

the fact speaks for itself that the tribe of Simeon must have experienced disaster beyond the rest. Yet it does seem very natural to think, that, in the recent Plague, the tribe to which Zimri belonged, who is mentioned as a leading person in it with great emphasis, was the tribe upon which the chief fury of the scourge fell-as having been that which had been the chief transgressors in the idolatry.

Moreover, that such was the case, I am further inclined to believe from another circumstance. One of the last great acts which Moses was commissioned to perform before his death, has a reference to this very affair of Baal-Peor. Avenge the

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children of Israel," says God to him,

"of

the Midianites, afterward thou shalt be gathered unto thy people."* Moses did so :

* Numbers, xxxi. 2.