Balak, king of the Moabites, was uneasy about the Israelites who had lately come out of Egypt, and were encamping on the plains of Moab. Twice he had sent for Balaam of Pethor to come and curse this vast array of people, so that he might drive them out of the land. And now Balaam had come. The first words he uttered on his arrival should have been a warning to Balak. He said, "Lo, I am come unto thee: have I now any power at all to say any thing? the word that God putteth in my mouth, that shall I speak."
The next morning Balak took Balaam to a point overlooking the camp of the Israelites, in order that he might curse them. With dismay he heard Balaam's blessing upon the great host of people. "What hast thou done unto me?" he cried. "I took thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast blessed them altogether. . . . Come, I pray thee, with me unto another place, from whence thou mayest see them: . . . and curse me them from thence." Again Balaam, obeying God's instructions, blessed the Israelites; and Balak, distraught with the turn of events, took him to a third point of vantage from which to view the children of Israel and curse them. As Balaam pronounced over them a blessing for the third time, Balak, defeated in his intent, sent him back to his own country.
How great a lesson is learned from this story in the book of Numbers! Again and again the material senses put forward the plea to "curse me this people," or, in other words, to see God's creation as mortal, sinning, dying. And though we turn firmly away from the contemplation of mortality, as Christian Science teaches us to do, the tempter may urge us, "Come . . . with me unto another place." From some other angle the condition which the student believed was healed, is presented in an effort to get him to admit that, after all, something faulty, something undeniably wrong, unfair, or incomplete, is real.
