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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Numbers 24:3 - 24:3
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Num 24:3 and Num 24:4 contain the preface to the prophecy: “The divine saying of Balaam the son of Beor, the divine saying of the man with closed eye, the divine saying of the hearer of divine words, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down and with opened eyes.” For the participial noun נָאֻם the meaning divine saying (effatum, not inspiratum, Domini) is undoubtedly established by the expression יְהֹוָה נְאֻם, which recurs in Num 14:28 and Gen 22:16, and is of constant use in the predictions of the prophets; and this applies even to the few passages where a human author is mentioned instead of Jehovah, such as Num 24:3, Num 24:4, and Num 24:15, Num 24:16; also 2Sa 23:1; Pro 30:1; and Psa 36:2, where a נָאֻם is ascribed to the personified wickedness. Hence, when Balaam calls the following prophecy a נָאֻם, this is done for the purpose of designating it as a divine revelation received from the Spirit of God. He had received it, and now proclaimed it as a man הָעַיִן שְׁתֻם, with closed eye. שָׁתַם does not mean to open, a meaning in support of which only one passage of the Mishnah can be adduced, but to close, like סָתַם in Dan 8:26, and שָׁתַם in Lam 3:8, with the שׁ softened into ס or שׂ (see Roediger in Ges. thes., and Dietrich's Hebrew Lexicon). “Balaam describes himself as the man with closed eye with reference to his state of ecstasy, in which the closing of the outer senses went hand in hand with the opening of the inner” (Hengstenberg). The cessation of all perception by means of the outer senses, so far as self-conscious reflection is concerned, was a feature that was common to both the vision and the dream, the two forms in which the prophetic gift manifested itself (Num 12:6), and followed from the very nature of the inward intuition. In the case of prophets whose spiritual life was far advanced, inspiration might take place without any closing of the outward senses. But upon men like Balaam, whose inner religious life was still very impure and undeveloped, the Spirit of God could only operate by closing their outward senses to impressions from the lower earthly world, and raising them up to visions of the higher and spiritual world.
(Note: Hence, as Hengstenberg observes (Balaam, p. 449), we have to picture Balaam as giving utterance to his prophecies with the eyes of his body closed; though we cannot argue from the fact of his being in this condition, that an Isaiah would be in precisely the same. Compare the instructive information concerning analogous phenomena in the sphere of natural mantik and ecstasy in Hengstenberg (pp. 449ff.), and Tholuck's Propheten, pp. 49ff.)
What Balaam heard in this ecstatic condition was אֵל אִמְרֵי, the sayings of God, and what he saw שַׁדַּי מַחֲזֵה, the vision of the Almighty. The Spirit of God came upon him with such power that he fell down (נֹפֵל), like Saul in 1Sa 19:24; not merely “prostrating himself with reverential awe at seeing and hearing the things of God” (Knobel), but thrown to the ground by the Spirit of God, who “came like an armed man upon the seer,” and that in such a way that as he fell his (spirit's) eyes were opened. This introduction to his prophecy is not an utterance of boasting vanity; but, as Calvin correctly observes, “the whole preface has no other tendency than to prove that he was a true prophet of God, and had received the blessing which he uttered from a celestial oracle.”
The blessing itself in Num 24:5. contains two thoughts: (1) the glorious prosperity of Israel, and the exaltation of its kingdom (Num 24:5-7); (2) the terrible power, so fatal to all its foes, of the people which was set to be a curse or a blessing to all the nations (Num 24:8, Num 24:9).