Numbers24chapter 24

Numbers 24:1-2

Twice before this Balaam went aside to meet omens, at 23:3 and 23:15, and the men who fetched him carried the rewards of divination at 22:7. Here he stops, because 23:23 had already told him there is no enchantment against Jacob. What he sees when he turns is the camp lying tribe by tribe in the order set at Numbers 2, and the text then says the spirit of God came upon him. Matthew Henry sets that beside 1 Samuel 19:23, where the same words fall on Saul while Saul is hunting David.

Numbers 24:3-4

The oracle opens with a formula Balaam uses twice, here and again word for word at verse 15, naming himself and calling himself the man whose eyes are open. Two things sit together in verse 4, that he heard the words of God and saw the vision of the Almighty, and that he fell down. The King James prints into a trance as a supplied phrase, since the Hebrew says only that he fell and leaves the state unnamed, and Adam Clarke and Keil and Delitzsch differ over how much weight to put on it. The man reporting God accurately in these two verses is the man 2 Peter 2:15 describes as one who loved the wages of unrighteousness.

Numbers 24:5-6

The man hired to curse supplies the words that open the Jewish morning prayer known as Mah Tovu, which begins from verse 5. What he praises is what he can see from the height, tents pitched by standard, and the four pictures in verse 6 are all of water and growth in dry country. Trees the Lord hath planted is the one picture with a planter named in it, and Psalm 1:3 keeps the same figure. Keil and Delitzsch identify the lign aloes as an eastern tree that did not grow in Moab, so the image is fetched from beyond the speaker's own country.

Numbers 24:7

Israel has no king anywhere in Numbers and this line gives him one, set higher than Agag, a name that returns at 1 Samuel 15:8 when Saul spares the king of Amalek and Samuel does not. Whether Agag is one man's name or a standing title carried by Amalek's kings is disputed, and Adam Clarke sets out both readings. The Septuagint has Gog in this verse where the Hebrew has Agag, and the older commentators divide over which stands behind the other. Water poured out of his buckets and seed in many waters is a figure of numerous offspring, which is what 23:10 had already said in asking who can count the dust of Jacob.

Numbers 24:8-9

Verse 8 repeats the opening of the third oracle at 23:22 with one change, that God brought them out becomes God brought him forth, so the nation is spoken of as a single man. The unicorn of the King James is the reem, a wild ox, and Job 39:9-10 uses it of an animal no man puts in a furrow. Couched as a lion is the word Jacob spoke over Judah at Genesis 49:9, and it arrives here from a seer fetched out of Aram, as 23:7 says. Verse 9 then closes with the promise given to Abram at Genesis 12:3 and to Jacob at Genesis 27:29, which turns the errand inside out, since Balak paid for a curse and the man he paid pronounces a curse on whoever curses.

Numbers 24:10-11

Balak smites his hands together, a gesture Ezekiel 21:14 uses for a sword about to fall and Job 27:23 uses for scorn at a ruined man. His complaint keeps a count of three, and the ass had asked Balaam at 22:28 why he had smitten her these three times, so the number he throws at Balaam is the number Balaam earned from an animal. Then he says the Lord hath kept thee back from honour, which names the fee openly and lays the loss of it on God.

Numbers 24:12-14

Balaam answers by quoting himself from 22:18, and the quotation is close without being exact, since the word of the Lord my God there becomes the commandment of the Lord here with of mine own mind added. He kept that word to the letter, and 2 Peter 2:15 still describes his way as the way of a man who loved the wages of unrighteousness. His offer to advertise Balak what this people shall do to thy people is the last thing he says before the fourth oracle, and 31:16 reports what he actually left behind, the counsel that brought Israel down at Peor. The phrase in the latter days occurs here for the first time in the King James Old Testament, and Genesis 49:1 rendered the same Hebrew as the last days when Jacob gathered his sons to tell them what would befall them.

Numbers 24:15-16

The fourth oracle repeats the preamble of verse 3 word for word and adds one line, that he knew the knowledge of the most High. Most High is El Elyon, the name Melchizedek used of God at Genesis 14:18-20 and the name Abram then took onto his own lips at Genesis 14:22. Calvin reads a gift of this kind as a thing given without sanctifying the man who carries it, and the book bears him out at 31:8.

Numbers 24:17

Balaam speaks of one man here, saying I shall see him, but not now, and the Sceptre he names is the word of Genesis 49:10, where the sceptre does not depart from Judah until Shiloh come. Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic rendering of the Torah read in the synagogue from the early centuries, gives the line of a king arising out of Jacob and the Messiah anointed from Israel, which John Gill cites, and in the second century Rabbi Akiva applied the verse to Simon bar Kosiba and named him Bar Kokhba, son of the star. Revelation 22:16 gives Christ the title of the bright and morning star without quoting this verse, and the reading of the star of Matthew 2 as its fulfilment is held by named writers including Matthew Henry and Adam Clarke rather than stated by the New Testament. The children of Sheth are read either as the line of Seth in Genesis 4:25, which would make the phrase mean all mankind, or as the sons of tumult, which is how the King James renders the parallel line at Jeremiah 48:45.

Numbers 24:18-19

Edom and Seir are the country of Esau, and 2 Samuel 8:14 records David putting garrisons throughout all Edom, which is the nearest thing in the history to what verse 18 says. Verse 19 gives no name to the one who shall have dominion, and readers divide between David, whose reign answers verse 18 plainly, and a later figure, since verse 14 had set the whole oracle in the latter days. Keil and Delitzsch hold that both horizons stand together in the same words, and the text supplies no date of its own.

Numbers 24:20-22

Amalek is called the first of the nations, and Genesis 36:12 makes Amalek a grandson of Esau, so the older commentators read first as first in the assault of Exodus 17:8 or first in standing rather than first in time. The two short oracles of verses 20 and 21 arrive together on one day at 1 Samuel 15, where Saul is sent against Amalek and warns the Kenites out from among them at 15:6. The Kenites are the people of Moses' father in law, who went up with Judah at Judges 1:16, so the oracle here addresses a friend of Israel. Thy nest in a rock plays on the sound of their name, and the captivity by Asshur in verse 22 is the Assyrian deportation the north met at 2 Kings 15:29.

Numbers 24:23-25

The last parable is four lines long and names nobody for the ships, only the coast they come from. Chittim is Kittim, listed among the sons of Javan at Genesis 10:4 and taken for Cyprus with the western coasts beyond it, and Daniel 11:30 uses the same phrase of a fleet that turned a king back. Who Eber stands for is disputed, since the name is the ancestor of the Hebrews at Genesis 10:21 and can also carry the sense of the country beyond the river, and Albert Barnes and Keil and Delitzsch take it differently. Then Balaam goes to his place and Balak goes his way, and the next word the book has of him is 31:8, where he is killed among the kings of Midian, so what he did between these two verses the narrative leaves unsaid.