Foreknowledge as firstfruit of wrath; Balaam hired to curse

ls sounding according to likelihood into a human mind, which things if those who have chosen to be curious should learn, they will melt very much, and as it were some firstfruit of the wrath and justice hung over them they undergo the foreknowledge. For upon holy prophets he rests, and often shares, not only the gloomy things alone, and upon which someone having scowled would sit of tears, but also as many as will be for some unto good-cheer and fair-day; yet to unholy and most accursed love-diviners he thoroughly unveils the evils about to be for themselves.

Palladius: And what or from where would the assurance of these things be for us?

Cyril: From the sacred Letters; for a type and manner of mystagogy has been written for us—the things that befell the more ancient. Or do you not know that Balak the of Zippor, the tyrant of Moabites and Midianites, having dreaded Israel’s unconquerable and unbroken multitude, and having believed he would at once be destroyed together with the other nations, was hiring Balaam? ‘Come then,’ saying, ‘curse Israel for me.’ And when the ambassadors had come: ‘Lodge the night,’ he says, ‘and I will answer you a matter which the Lord should speak toward me.’ And seeking cold and demonic dreamlets, and expecting things happening for him perhaps from a charm and also sorcery, he said the Lord would speak to him; for he was pretending to call-upon-God. Yet even if the sacred Letter uses the customary voices of the sorcerers, we would not think, thinking rightly, that God who is by nature and truly sends the true as from love into profane souls, and talks toward a foul man and sorcerer and idolater. Yet, ‘God came,’ it says, ‘toward Balaam, and said to him: What are these humans beside you?’ And when that one had announced the cause of the arrival, ‘God said,’ it says, ‘toward Balaam: You will not go with them, nor will you curse the people; for it is blessed.’ Behold clearly from God’s person the blessed angel turns away the deceiver and empty-speaker sorcerer from seeking to curse the one blessed beside God, and from setting opposite the votes from above the inventions from human ill-counsel—not as if the curse were strong to wrong, but in order that the one who has unreasonably received such a hope might be clearly and evidently informed, and through him, that Israel would never become catchable for Moabites or Midianites, God shielding and contending, and walling with favors the people clinging to him and having been blessed. Yet these things the divine angel both said and was commanding to do; and when the diviner was baited by the promises of gifts unto needing to walk, having perhaps also truly supposed he would be strong, the blessed angel allows to go, yet was seen in the middle of the road, with a flashing sword, teaching clearly that the war for him is toward both God and angels, if he should wish to curse the blessed ones. And when he had arrived toward the Midianite, he was raising altars, and