censured for another reason: “They [the Midianites] are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so that the LORD’s community was struck by the plague” (Num. 31:16). Balaam, that is, had advised Balak to demoralize Israel’s fighting force by using Midianite women to seduce it into the service of their cult (see the Comment to 24:14). That this tradition is as old as that of Deuteronomy, if not older, is now demonstrable