Balak, the king of Moab and Midian, saw that he was not strong enough to withstand the sacred marauders, and well knew that surrender meant a wholesale massacre--that those who had dared to defend their homes would be placed under harrows of iron--that the silvery head of the aged grandsire would sink beneath a sword wielded in the name of God; that unborn babes would be ripped from the wombs of Moabite women and the maidens of Midian coerced into concubinage by their heaven-led captors. In this dire extremity Balak bethought him of Brother Balaam, who was not "a prophet of God," as popularly supposed, but a priest of Baal, the deity devoutly worshiped in Moab and Midian. It were ridiculous to suppose that the king, princes and elders of Moab and Midian would appeal for aid to the God of their enemies instead of to their own divinity, for in those days the principal business of a deity was to wage war in behalf of his worshipers. Balaam was a Midianite, and Balak sent messengers to him "with the reward of divination in their hand," and begged that he would kindly come over and knock the Israelites off the Christmas tree with one of his smooth-bore, muzzle-loading maledictions; "for," said he, with a pious fervor that proves he was addressing a priest of his own faith, "I wot that he whom thou blesseth is blessed, and whom thou curseth is cursed." He evidently believed that Balaam carried the celestial thunderbolts concealed about his person--that when he turned them loose those on whom they alighted frizzled up like a fat angleworm on a sea-coal fire. The good man said he would see what could be done to help Balak out of the hole. "And God came unto Balaam and said, 'What men are these with thee?' "