In the end Balaam still does what he cannot help doing as a true prophet: he blesses the people of God. He blesses them despite all the promises and threats of Balak, who invited him...
In the end Balaam still does what he cannot help doing as a true prophet: he blesses the people of God. He blesses them despite all the promises and threats of Balak, who invited him. This is understandable: Balaam knows perfectly well what happens to a prophet who betrays his calling. He had hardly heard anything about Yahweh before: he was from Mesopotamia, and rumors about the Hebrews could scarcely have reached there, especially since even closer neighbors then knew nothing definite about them.
Balaam knew only one thing for certain: the very voice he had heard, most likely in childhood, and after hearing which he had become a prophet, now commanded him to bless this people that had appeared from who knew where, not to curse it. There may have been cases when everything was not so unambiguous. It was not by chance that Balak invited Balaam in order to curse the people, in effect giving him a kind of commission for a curse, and Balaam did go, although the first signs that he should not go had been given to him even before he set out. There must have been such cases when a prophet could call for help on the one whose voice he heard.
He could make use of the power that stood behind him. In those days every prophet was also partly a magician; he possessed a power that he could control to a certain degree. If the desire to control the power, to master it, won out, the prophet disappeared and a magician, a tribal sorcerer, took his place. If the prophet consistently renounced everything magical that the prophetic experience of his age implied, renounced mastering the power and every attempt to manipulate it, he could become a true prophet, who could sometimes hear the voice of God and see angels.
Everything here depended on the choice of the person himself, as it always does on every spiritual path. For His part, God does not want anyone's destruction; He wants to save everyone and give everyone the possibility of hearing Him and communicating with Him. Such a moment of truth came for Balaam too, when the choice arose: whether to bless the people as had been revealed to him, or to try to use the power he had received in order to curse them. Balaam chooses the first, remaining a prophet and becoming God's witness, contrary to what Balak expects from him.
24 Balaam inspired by God, blesses Israel again, Числ 24:1-9.
Answers Balak's reproof, Числ 24:10-13.
Utters several prophecies, Числ 24:14-24.
Goes home, Числ 24:25.
24:17 I shall see him - Or, I have seen, or do see the star, and sceptre as it here follows, that is, a great and eminent prince, which was to come out of Israel's loins, the Messiah, as both Jewish and Christian interpreters expound it, who most eminently and fully performed what is here said, in destroying the enemies of Israel or of God's church, here described under the names of the nearest and fiercest enemies of Israel: And to him alone agrees the foregoing verb properly, I shall see him, in my own person, as every eye shall see him, when he comes to judgment. Not now - Not yet, but after many ages. A star - A title often given to, princes and eminent persons, and particularly to the Messiah, Откр 2:28 Числ 24, Откр 22:16, .A sceptre - That is, a sceptre - bearer, a king or ruler, even that sceptre mentioned Быт 49:10.The corners - The borders, which are often used in scripture for the whole country to which they belong. Of Sheth - This seems to be the name of some then eminent, though now unknown place or prince in Moab; there being innumerable instances of such places or persons sometime famous, but now utterly lost as to all monuments and remembrances of them.