Numbers 24

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:32:27utc

Balaam's third prophecy (continued) Ch. 24:1-25

Balaam's prophecy in this chapter is divided into two sections: vs. 1-13, which includes Balak's furious reaction, and vs. 14-25 where Balaam gives an epilogue, in which he pronounces the highest and purest prophecy of this whole section.

Balaam finds himself here at the headquarters of Baal-Peor, one of the foul representatives of God's archenemy. He has come to the conclusion that, not only he is unable to curse Israel, which he knew all the time, but that he is forced to pronounce positive blessings upon the people. This makes him decide to change his approach. We read: "Now when Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel, he did not resort to sorcery as at other times, but turned his face toward the desert." What form of sorcery Balaam used before, we do not know. It could be that he tried some form of trance, either with or without the help of certain drugs. It could also be that in turning his face toward the desert he expected to be able to use some demonic power. If so, he was frustrated, because what he saw was not the desert demon, but the people of Israel, camped below him. And instead of meeting with a demon, the Spirit of God came upon him. This time he is faced with a reality that he had never experienced before in this way. He may have dabbled in sorcery, and occasionally brushed against something that came from the Lord, but what happened to Balaam here must have been the most awful experience of his life: a personal encounter with the Spirit of the living God. He may have felt something demons feel in the presence of God, which James describes by saying: "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that-- and shudder."[ 1 ] Judas would feel that shudder later when Jesus handed him the piece of bread that represented His broken body. We read in John's Gospel: "Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him."[ 2 ] So Balaam encountered his moment of truth.

He responded to this experience with a piece of self propagation, as if this was a normal experience for him: "The oracle of Balaam son of Beor, the oracle of one whose eye sees clearly, the oracle of one who hears the words of God, who sees a vision from the Almighty, who falls prostrate, and whose eyes are opened." Yet, we may be sure that this soothsayer had never had a revelation such as this one before in his life.

The text of Balaam's prophecy is movingly beautiful. We have to bear in mind that he was looking at a camp of tents in the desert. Tents are temporary dwelling places for men; most people in this world live in more permanent structures. The Bible compares our frail and mortal bodies to tents which are meant to be broken down one day and replaced with permanent residences in glory. The Apostle Paul reminds us: "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling."[ 3 ] Yet, looking at those tents in the desert, Balaam said: "How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!" The beauty of Israel's tents was derived from the fact that the Lord Himself had pitched His tent among them. We cannot say these words without remembering what John wrote: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling [pitched His tent] among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."[ 4 ] And in Balaam's eye the desert of Arboth was transformed by Israel's presence into "gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the LORD, like cedars beside the waters." The Pulpit Commentary takes "a river" to mean the river Euphrates. We read: "The river … means the Euphrates. Balaam combines the pleasant imagery of his own cultivated land with that of the wilder scene amidst which he now stood." Balaam pronounces beautiful the tents, those reminders of our transient existence, of frailty caused by the entrance of sin. We may ask, if that beauty symbolizes the transient, what will the eternal be like? If the presence of God can make life in a tent beautiful, how will it be when we enter the city and see His face?

The same can be said about the transformation of the desert. Israel was camped in a dry and barren country, but Balaam sees them: "Like valleys they spread out, like gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the LORD, like cedars beside the waters." It reminds us of the man in Psalm One, whose "delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers."[ 5 ] The difference is not in the outward circumstances but in the presence of the Lord. "He turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs."[ 6 ]

The King to whom Balaam refers cannot have been any of the Israelite kings who had not even appeared yet on the horizon at this point. Israel was still a theocracy, and God Himself was their King. The phrase may contain a prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah, like the Star of Jacob which Balaam mentions later on. Agag was probably not the name of a certain person living at that time, but a title. The Pulpit Commentary says here: "The name Agag … does not occur again except as the name of the king of Amalek whom Saul conquered and Samuel slew (I Sam. xv.); yet it may safely be assumed that it was the official title of all the kings of Amalek, resembling in this 'Abimelech' and 'Pharaoh.' " The fact that at least one, and probably two references to the coming of the Messiah are made in Balaam's prophecy is a clear proof of the divine inspiration of these verses.

The text of the verses 8 and 9 is almost literally the same as the previous oracle.[ 7 ] Balaam's closing words: "May those who bless you be blessed and those who curse you be cursed!" are for Balak the straw that breaks the camel's back. They make Balaam the blessed one and Balak the cursed. The unspoken curse for Israel boomeranged to Balak. His majesty loses his temper, and he tells the prophet to go home without payment. Whether Balaam actually went home or not is a point of discussion among the scholars. Since Balaam was found among those slain in ch. 31:8 when Israel actually invaded Midian, some experts think that there were two people with the name of Balaam. This seems highly unlikely, as we shall see later.

Before taking leave, Balaam pronounces his most profound and far-reaching prophecy, and he does this without being invited to do so. This prophecy is not a curse in reverse, like the preceding ones, but it is the result of the presence of the Holy Spirit who overpowered Balaam. He may have wanted to shut off the flow of words, but found himself unable to do so. But even in pronouncing this piece of genuine prophecy, Balaam manages to turn things to his own advantage. He introduces the Word which God puts in his mouth with some advertisement about his own prophetic gifts. He introduces the prophecy as: "The oracle of Balaam son of Beor, the oracle of one whose eye sees clearly, the oracle of one who hears the words of God, who has knowledge from the Most High, who sees a vision from the Almighty, who falls prostrate, and whose eyes are opened." This soothsayer has reached the point of no return. It is true that he heard the words of God and had received knowledge from the Most High, and received a vision from the Almighty. His body falls prostrate before God, but his dark soul is not willing to give up the secret plan he had formed to corrupt Israel through the seduction by women connected to the Baal-Peor worship. The Word of God that comes out of his mouth has not changed his heart. Balaam goes down in history as a false prophet, "who loved the wages of wickedness."[ 8 ] We should pause and stand in awe before the tragedy of this man's life. He handled the Word of God, while at the same time searing his heart against this very Word. Balaam could have been saved by this very Word of God, had he done what James advises the New Testament Christians to do: "Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you."[ 9 ] Balaam's attitude shows us the awesome power of man to resist the Word of God. Paul said: "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."[ 10 ] When God created light, the light did not offer any resistance to the Word of creation; but when God speaks the same Word to make His light shine in our hearts, we have the option to refuse.

Not only did Balaam refuse to be saved, he went on prophesying the Word of God, and he fell prostrate before God, as if he was the holiest man in the world. Whom did Balaam want to deceive? His greed had caused a complete moral blindness.

Yet, the content of his prophecy is among the most remarkable ones in the whole Old Testament. This prophet foretells the coming of the Messiah about two millennia before His arrival. His words transcend the boundaries of his time. The Messiah is described with words like "a star," "a scepter," and "a ruler." The enemies are called with local names, such as "Moab," and "Edom," but other designations indicate that the impact of the Messiah's coming will be of global proportions. This is evident in "all the sons of Sheth," and "the survivors of the city."

In his prophecy about Moab, the prophet Jeremiah seems to quote from Balaam's prophecy by saying: "In the shadow of Heshbon the fugitives stand helpless, for a fire has gone out from Heshbon, a blaze from the midst of Sihon; it burns the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of the noisy boasters."[ 11 ] The fact that Jeremiah substitutes the clause "all the sons of Sheth" with "the noisy boasters" has caused quite a debate among the scholars. According to The Pulpit Commentary, most Jewish commentators follow the Septuagint, and understand the phrase to mean the sons of Seth, the son of Adam, that is all mankind. The commentary further remarks that: "Jewish prophecy, from beginning to end, contemplated the Messiah as the Conqueror, the subduer, and even the Destroyer of all the heathen, i.e. of all who were not Jews. It is only in the New Testament that the iron scepter with which he was to dash in pieces the heathen (Ps. ii. 9) becomes the pastoral staff wherewith he shepherds them. … The prophecy was that Messiah should destroy the heathen; the fulfillment that he destroyed not them, but their heathenism (cf. e.g. Ps. cxlix. 6-9 with James v. 20)." The meaning of the "iron scepter" is probably best explained in one of the later chapters of Revelation, where John describes Christ as the rider on a white horse, and he says: "Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. 'He will rule them with an iron scepter.' He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty."[ 12 ] The "iron scepter" is the equivalent of the "sharp sword" which comes out of His mouth. The victory of Christ over the nations is not the outcome of a physical war in which Jesus defeats the others, but it is the result of a moral judgment by the Word of God. The fact that the pictures used in the book of Revelation are those of physical carnage may confuse us, but we should understand that the sword that kills is not a sword that is in Christ's hand, but one that comes out of His mouth.

Neither Balaam nor Balak would have understood this. They only feared and occupied themselves with "those who kill the body." Jesus tells us: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."[ 13 ] In a sense Balaam saw the day of Christ, as Abraham did before him. Jesus' refers to this in John's Gospel by saying: "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."[ 14 ] Balaam did not see Christ's Day experientially as Abraham did, but he saw it as a visionary in the prophecy he pronounced. His reaction, however, was far from Abraham's rejoicing. We read that he says: "Ah, who can live when God does this?" To him the aroma of Christ was a smell of death.[ 15 ]

Balaam's parting oracle is not a chronological bird's eye view of history. He begins in the center with the coming of Christ, both His first coming and His second, and from there he moves back to the conquest of Canaan by Israel, and to the Assyrian captivity. All of Balaam's prophecy will ultimately be fulfilled when the last enemy is destroyed. In the words of the Apostle Paul: "Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death."[ 16 ]

There is much in Balaam's last prophecy that is hard to unravel. Scholars disagree about the meaning of some of the names he mentions. There is the strange mention of the ships coming from the shores of Kittim, which some believe refers to Italy, others to Cyprus. But the message of judgment to come upon this world is loud and clear. The Messiah will come from Israel and will judge the world.

For those who reject the possibility of prophecy that deals with future events, Balaam's words can only be explained by moving them to a later date, like after the disappearance of the Macedonian empire. The Pulpit Commentary comments on this by saying: "The difficulty and arbitrary character of such an assumption becomes the more evident the more it is considered; nor does it seem consistent with the form into which the predictions are cast. A patriotic Jew looking back from the days of Alexander or his successors would not call the great Eastern power by the name of Asshur, because two subsequent empires had arisen in the place of Assyria proper. But that Balaam, looking forward down the dim vista of the future, should see Asshur, and only Asshur, is in perfect keeping with what we know of prophetic perspective, - the further off the events descried by inward vision, the more extreme the foreshortening, - according to which law it is well known that the first and second advents of Christ are inextricably blended in almost every case."

The Pulpit Commentary has an interesting addition to its verse-by-verse comment, which is called Notes on the Prophecies of Balaam. The writer tries to sort out the differences between the local elements of Balaam's prophecy and the Messianic character of the content. He makes an effort to explain the, in his view, incongruity between the ruthlessness of the victors and the actual identity of the Messiah whom Balaam predicts. Judging from, what he calls, a higher moral standard, he refers Balaam's feelings about the subject of his own prophecy to a more primitive period in which annihilation of enemies was considered a lofty feat. All this is open for discussion, of course. One profound statement in the commentary is worth quoting, however: "God ever reveals the supernatural through the natural, the heavenly through the earthly, the future through the present." It is certainly true that Balaam himself could not have understood the portent of his prophecy, but if we look at his words in the light of Scripture as a whole, we can understand clearly what the Holy Spirit has to say to us.

The remaining mystery in these pages is how the information in these chapters about Balaam and his curse came into Israel's possession. There are several possibilities, such as a written account that Balaam may have left behind, which was found upon him when he was killed, or even a report as a result of an interrogation of the prophet after his capture and before his execution. None of this is reported. It could be that Moses received the information through a direct revelation from the Lord, but that seems to be less likely, since human avenues were available.

[ 1 ] James 2:19

[ 2 ] John 13:26,27

[ 3 ] II Cor 5:1,2

[ 4 ] John 1:14

[ 5 ] Ps. 1:2,3

[ 6 ] Ps. 107:35

[ 7 ] See ch. 23:22,24

[ 8 ] II Pet. 2:15

[ 9 ] James 1:21

[ 10 ] II Cor. 4:6

[ 11 ] Jer. 48:45

[ 12 ] Rev. 19:15

[ 13 ] Matt. 10:28

[ 14 ] John 8:56

[ 15 ] See II Cor. 2:15,16

[ 16 ] I Cor. 15:24-26