Numbers 24:3

THIRD ORACLE

Balaam the son of Beor saith,

And the man whose eye was closed saith;

He saith, who heareth the words of God,

Who seeth the vision of the Almighty,

Falling down, and having his eyes open:

How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob,

Thy tabernacles, O Israel!

As valleys are they spread forth,

As gardens by the river-side,

As lign-aloes which Jehovah hath planted,

As cedar-trees beside the waters.

Water shall flow from his buckets,

And his seed shall be in many waters,

And his king shall be higher that Agag,

And his kingdom shall be exalted.

God bringeth him forth out of Egypt;

He hath as it were the strength of the wild-ox:

He shall eat up the nations his adversaries,

And shall break their bones in pieces,

And smite them through with his arrows.

He couched, he lay down as a lion,

And as a lioness; who shall rouse him up?

Blessed be every one that blesseth thee,

And cursed be every one that curseth thee."

Balak evidently had hoped that this third effort to curse Israel would be successful, but Balaam's words here went further than ever in the opposite direction, going so far as to pronounce blessings upon all who blessed Israel, and curses upon all who cursed them! Balak's patience was exhausted, and his anger kindled against Balaam, as indicated by his clapping his hands after the oracle was spoken.

"Whose eyes were closed (Numbers 24:3b) ... having his eyes open ..." (Numbers 24:4). Well, which was it? Jewish interpreters came up with the amazing postulation that Balaam was blind in one eye and could see with the other![5] Others, including such scholars as Albright, give another translation of the clause in Numbers 24:3, rendering it, "Whose eye is true."[6] If this is received, the apparent contradiction is removed. Traditionally, it has been believed for ages that God's revelation to his prophets sometimes came during a kind of trance in which the prophet's eyes remained open. Dummelow tells us that the word rendered "closed" in Numbers 24:3 "is of uncertain meaning, and that if it does mean `closed,' the true meaning is that Balaam's eyes were closed to earthly sights but open to heavenly."[7] The word for "open" in Numbers 24:4 is the ordinary one, indicating quite surely that when Balaam received the oracle his eyes were open.[8]

It is also significant that in Numbers 24:4 we have two names for God. [~'Elohiym] rendered "God," and [~'El] [~Shadday] translated "Almighty." Well, why don't the critical commentators postulate plural sources for this verse? The simple answer, so often avoided in other passages of the Pentateuch, is that various names for God are used as synonyms, for the purpose of more fluent speech, there being no way to deny that such is the usage of the two names here. "Here [~Shadday] is used simply as a synonym for [~'Elohiym]."[9] Amen! And our own conviction is that this is by far and away the principal reason for the various names of God in the Pentateuch.

Note in Numbers 24:5 the use of tabernacles and tents as complementary synonyms in parallel lines. Gray commented thus: "Thy dwellings is merely a synonym for thy tents in the parallel line."[10] All of that "tension" supposed by Noth to have been produced by the use of these words[11] is merely due to his imagination.

The valleys, gardens, beautiful trees, and water buckets overflowing, etc., which are mentioned in Numbers 24:6 and Numbers 24:7 are merely symbols of the blessings of God which will accompany Israel.

In Numbers 24:7, we encounter the "piece de resistance" for the late-daters of the Balaam narrative who gleefully affirm:

"The name Agag can scarcely refer to any other than Agag the king of the Amalekites known from the Saul story (1 Samuel 15:8ff. On this account, this discourse must be dated in the time of Saul."[12]

Even the great critical commentator Gray rejected the bald, unproved conclusions such as that, saying "But Amalek (in the days of that Agag) was scarcely so formidable a kingdom as to justify such an allusion."[13] The true explanation of that which at first appears to be an anachronism is given by Whitelaw:

"It may safely be assumed that Agag was the official title of all the kings of Amalek, resembling in this Abimelech, and Pharaoh. Here the word stands for the dynasty and the nation of Amalek; and there is no need to suppose that there is any reference to any particular individual or event in the distant future. The `king of Israel' here spoken of is certainly not Saul. The very idea of Israel's having an earthly monarch like the nations around them was alien to the mind of God."[14]

Jamieson also concurred in this explanation: "The Amalekites were then the most powerful of all the desert tribes; Agag was a title common to all their kings."[15]

In Numbers 24:9, Orlinsky and some translators would substitute "king of beasts" or "great lion" for the word "lioness" as given here and in Numbers 23:24, and in Genesis 49:9, which Orlinsky called the "traditional rendition."[16] We are by no means certain that this change should be allowed. A lioness aroused in defense of her young could be intended, indicating a strength and fury by no means any less than that of "king of beasts" or "great lion."