Then Balaam delivered this message: “Balak brought me from Aram. The king of Moab summoned me from the eastern mountains. ‘Come, curse Jacob for me,’ he said. ‘Come, condemn Israel.’
Next in rank to him was Eleazar, another one of the three fighting men. He was the son of Dodo and grandson of Aho. Eleazar was with David at Pas Dammim when the Philistines gathered there for battle. When the soldiers from Israel retreated,
When that day comes, people will make fun of you. They will sing this sad song about you: “We are completely ruined. The Lord gives our people’s possessions ⌞to others⌟. He takes them from us. He divides our fields among our captors.”
Won’t all of them ridicule him, directing clever sayings and riddles at him, like: “ ‘How horrible it will be for the one who makes himself rich with what is not his own and makes himself wealthy on loans. How long will this go on?’
‘Some people have just come from Egypt and are spreading out all over the countryside. Now come and curse them for me. Maybe I’ll be able to fight them and force them out.’ ”
He used another illustration. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman mixed into a large amount of flour until the yeast worked its way through all the dough.”
They wanted to arrest him but were afraid of the crowd. They knew that he had directed this illustration at them. So they left him alone and went away.
They cannot join because they didn’t greet you with food and water on your trip from Egypt. They even hired Balaam, son of Beor, from Pethor in Aram Naharaim, to curse you.
David told the Philistine, “You come to me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Armies, the God of the army of Israel, whom you have insulted.