Balaam blesses; God scatters false prophecy; stars cannot save

was ordering to sacrifice oxen; yet at once he was a prophet, not the customary and false-speaker, but by a divine and unspeakable power he was turned contrary to hope toward the opposite. For he was cursing not at all, yet was rather blessing Israel, and sends bitter griefs into Balak. And it has been written thus: that ‘Balak was wroth and clapped with his hands, and Balak said toward Balaam: I have called you to curse my enemy, and behold blessing you have blessed this third time. And Balaam said toward Balak: Did I not also speak to your messengers whom you sent toward me, saying: If Balak should give me his house full of silver and gold, I will not be able to pass by the Lord’s word to do it good or evil from myself? as many as God should say to me, these I will say.’ Customary then for the false-diviners also to use voices so deceptive, considering that altogether and in every way they will say the true to those wishing to be curious. Yet understand that saying the exact is foreign to the enchanter’s and magician’s art; and it would sometimes be added from God upon terribly putting to sleep the profane souls by the foretelling of the things about to be.

Palladius: I am persuaded.

Cyril: For that God has hated and loosens such—or rather sorceries and empty-speakings—would become clear when he says: ‘I am the Lord God;’ and besides these: ‘Who else will scatter signs of ventriloquists and the prophecies from a heart, turning wise ones backward, and making foolish their counsel, and standing words of his child and making true the counsel of his angels?’ For the prophecies from a heart he shows stale and false-speaking; yet of his own child—that is Christ—he stands every word; and the counsel of his angels—that is, as many as the heralds of the faith upon him should wish to speak—these he shows all full of truth, witnessing with signs and wonders, and the other workings of the Spirit. And he said somewhere again, reproaching some for the things adulterated by God’s law: ‘Stand then in your charms, and in your much pharmacy, which you were learning from your youth, if you will be able to be benefited; you have toiled in your counsels; let them stand and save you—the astrologers of the heaven, those seeing the stars; let them announce to you what is about to come upon you.’ You see then how God convicts the cursed star-sorcery as worthy of laughter and altogether useless. And that again the unerring would fit him and him alone, and the readiness unto words about the things expected to be without wandering, hear him saying through Isaiah’s voice: ‘Remember these things, and groan; repent, you who have wandered, turn in the heart, and remember the former things from the age; that I am God, and there is not besides me; announcing beforehand the last things before they come to be, and at once it was finished. And I said: