Numbers22chapter 22

Numbers 22:1-3

The plains of Moab is the address for the whole rest of the book, from this verse to the last chapter, and every remaining law, census and ruling in Numbers is given from this camp. Israel sits beside Moab under a standing order not to touch it, which Deuteronomy 2:9 records as the command to distress not the Moabites nor contend with them in battle. Moab is sore afraid anyway, and the terror of a king whom Israel has been forbidden to attack is what starts the next three chapters.

Numbers 22:4-5

Moab takes counsel with the elders of Midian, and Moab came of Lot while Midian came of Abraham by Keturah at Genesis 25:1-2, so the two peoples hiring a curse are relations of the nation they fear. Balaam is fetched from Pethor by the river, which Deuteronomy 23:4 places in Mesopotamia, hundreds of miles up the Euphrates from the Jordan. A plaster inscription uncovered at Tell Deir Alla in Jordan in 1967, written centuries after this in an Aramaic dialect, opens with the words of Balaam son of Beor, a seer of the gods, so the name was carried in that country outside Israel's books.

Numbers 22:6-7

Balak states the Abrahamic formula of Genesis 12:3 in his own mouth and then hires a man to run it backwards over the seed it was given to. The fee goes ahead of the question, rewards of divination in their hand, and Joshua 13:22 uses the word soothsayer of Balaam when it records his death. Nehemiah 13:2 gives the whole errand in one line, that they hired Balaam against them to curse them, and God turned the curse into a blessing.

Numbers 22:8-9

Balaam answers a Moabite delegation using the covenant name, and God does come to him that night. What he was has divided readers for centuries: Calvin treats him as a diviner whom God overruled for his own ends, others allow him a real gift turned to hire, and the book lets him say true things from beginning to end while never calling him a prophet of Israel. The question put to him, what men are these with thee, is the kind God asked Adam among the trees and Cain in the field, put to a man who knows the answer perfectly well.

Numbers 22:10-12

He repeats Balak's message and drops the end of it, keeping the request to curse and leaving out the king's confession that whom Balaam blesses is blessed. God answers in three parts inside one verse, do not go, do not curse, and the ground of both, for they are blessed. The ground is the point, since the blessing on that people was Abraham's and no fee alters it.

Numbers 22:13-14

What God said was that Israel is blessed, and what Balaam reports to the princes is that permission was withheld from him personally. That version leaves a door open for a better offer, since a man denied leave may be granted it later. The princes shorten it again for Balak, Balaam refuseth to come with us, so by the time the news reaches the king the refusal belongs to the man.

Numbers 22:15-17

The second embassy is graded upward in number and in rank, and the offer climbs from a diviner's fee to promotion unto very great honour with a blank promise attached, I will do whatsoever thou sayest unto me. Balak is treating a settled answer as an opening price. 2 Peter 2:15 names what was on the table, calling it the wages of unrighteousness, and Jude 11 says Balaam ran greedily after it for reward.

Numbers 22:18-19

The sentence he speaks is true and it is one of the strongest in the chapter, that a house full of silver and gold could not carry him past the word of the Lord his God, to do less or more. His next sentence asks God about a matter God had answered flatly the night before, and the word he uses for it is more. Henry reads the second inquiry as the tell, because a man who has an answer he dislikes goes back to ask again.

Numbers 22:20-21

The permission arrives with a condition and a limit, if the men call thee, and only the word I shall say to thee. Verse 21 records no call from the men, only Balaam rising in the morning, saddling and going, and the very next verse says God's anger was kindled because he went. Readers divide on how those two verses hold together: Calvin takes the leave as given in anger and to the man's ruin, Henry puts the anger on the appetite rather than on the road itself, and Keil and Delitzsch locate the fault in the desire he brought to the second asking.

Numbers 22:22

The word rendered adversary here is the Hebrew satan, an ordinary noun for one who stands in another man's path, used of men at 1 Samuel 29:4 and of Hadad the Edomite at 1 Kings 11:14. What stands in this road with a drawn sword is the angel of the Lord, and the man he blocks is on an errand he had been given leave to take. Two servants ride with him, and the only member of the party who sees anything is the animal underneath him.

Numbers 22:23-25

The obstruction repeats and the space tightens with each repetition, first open field, then a path between two vineyard walls where a foot gets crushed. Every time the animal moves to save his life she is beaten for the thing that saved it. A man hired for his sight is riding a beast that sees what he cannot.

Numbers 22:26-27

The third station has no room on either hand, and the animal answers the only way left to her by lying down under him. His anger is kindled in exactly the words used of God's anger at verse 22, and the staff takes over from the hand. The narrowing carries the sense of the scene, since the road he chose runs out.

Numbers 22:28-30

The Lord opens her mouth and she asks a question instead of carrying a message, what have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times. Balaam argues back and wishes for a sword to kill her with, and the sword he wants is already drawn in the hand he cannot see. He offers no remark at all on the fact that his animal is speaking, and she is the second speaking animal in Scripture after the serpent of Genesis 3. 2 Peter 2:16 reads the scene as the dumb ass speaking with man's voice, forbidding the madness of the prophet.

Numbers 22:31-33

The King James gives the same English word for both openings, though the Hebrew uses one verb for unstopping a mouth and another for uncovering eyes, and the seer needed his own uncovered by God like any other man. The angel states the charge as thy way is perverse before me, and then gives an account of the last three stops in which the ass is the reason her rider is alive. Balaam ends flat on his face in front of a figure his donkey had been watching for three stations.

Numbers 22:34-35

His confession is I have sinned, and the ground he gives for the sin is ignorance, that he did not know what was standing in the road. His offer to turn back carries a condition on the front of it, if it displease thee, and he is sent forward under the same restriction he was given at verse 20. The errand stands unchanged except that the man now knows what is escorting him.

Numbers 22:36-38

Balak goes out as far as the border at Arnon to meet him, and Numbers 21:13 had already fixed Arnon as the boundary of Moab. His greeting is a reproach with the money in it, am I not able indeed to promote thee to honour. Balaam answers with another true sentence, the word that God putteth in my mouth, that shall I speak, and chapters 23 and 24 show him keeping it to the letter while Numbers 31:16 records the counsel he found to give instead.

Numbers 22:39-41

Balak kills oxen and sheep and sends portions to Balaam and to the princes, so the working arrangement opens with a shared meal. In the morning he takes him up to the high places of Baal, a shrine of the god of the country, to look out over the camp. What he is shown is the utmost part of the people, the edge of the camp rather than the whole of it, and Balak tries the same partial view again at 23:13 once the first oracle has gone against him.