d said,
"Did I not call thee that thou shouldst curse mine enemies? and yet
thou hast blest them now these three times. I had thought that I
should have honored thee, but the Lord hath turned thee away from
honor." Balaam answered and said, "Yet I told thee at first, that
though thou shouldst give me thine house full of silver and gold,
still I could speak nothing else but what God should say to me."

Yet did the prophet afterward give the king counsel how he should
manage with the people, although he might not curse them and overcome
them by power,--so that they sinned against God. Then the king sets
up an idol, by name Baal-Peor, and causes that the Moabite women,
daughters of lords and princes, should ensnare the people to
themselves to sacrifice to their gods; and when they had brought them
to themselves, they made supplication to the idol with meats and
drinks, and committed sin with the women. Then was God angry, and
commanded the chief of the people to be hung upon the gallows, and
permitted four and twenty thousand men to be overcome in one day.
Such was this prophet Balaam's advice, for the sake of gold.

Of this St. Peter here speaks, and would say that our ecclesiastics
are specially Balaam's children and scholars; for just as he gave
evil counsel to set up an idol so that the children of Israel should
be brought to sin and provoke God that they should be slain, so have
our bishops also set up an idol, in God's name,--to wit, their human
doctrine of their own works; and they let faith go, and they lure to
themselves christian souls whom they injure, and thereby provoke God
to anger, so that he has punished the world with blindness and
stupidity. For all this we may thank our spiritual masters.

Thus Peter compares especially these false teachers to the prophet
Balaam, since they even, like Balaam, purely for the sake of gold,
set up such idolatry and ruin souls.

Besides, he mentions his right name, for Bileaam or Balaam is he
called in Hebrew, a swallower or swiller, like one who gapes his
throat open, and swallows and devours all. This shameful name must he
bear, because he has brought so many people into sin, insomuch that
they are destroyed and overcome.

Such Balaamites are our bishops and ecclesiastics, who are the throat
of the devil, by which he draws so many souls to himself, and
swallows them down. But the surname of this prophet is, the son of
Bosor,--that is to say, flesh,--or, as Moses says