Numbers 23:1 - Meaning and Application

Here is, I. Great effort was made to get Israel cursed. The goal was to persuade the God of Israel to abandon his people, or at least to stay neutral and let Moab win. How foolish superstition is, to imagine that God can be controlled by human pressure. Balaam and Balak thought they could bribe him with altars and sacrifices offered without any command from him, as if he were pleased by empty ritual. It was absurd to think these offerings could win God’s favor, since they involved no real faith or obedience.

It seems they were offering these sacrifices to the God of heaven, the highest divine being, not to one of their local gods. Yet the piling up of altars showed how far they had drifted from the faith of their ancestors and into idolatry. Those who multiply altars also multiply false gods. Ephraim made many altars to sin (Hosea 8:11). They no longer wanted to keep God in their thoughts and so became empty in their minds, yet they still expected these offerings to turn God against Israel, who had his sanctuary and his chosen altar among them.

Notice, first, how commanding Balaam was. He was proud to give orders to a king and set rules for princes. That is the spirit of the evil one, who lifts himself above everything called God or worshiped as divine. Balaam speaks with great authority: “Build me here, where I have chosen, seven altars.” In this way, he hid his hatred for Israel behind a show of devotion, but his sacrifice was hateful to God because it came from a wicked heart (Proverbs 21:27). He was not trying to honor God with right sacrifices, but to gain money from wrongdoing.

Notice, also, how ready Balak was to obey. The altars were built at once, and the sacrifices were prepared, the best they had, seven bulls and seven rams. Balak made no protest over the cost. He did not treat it as too much trouble or beneath his dignity to stand by the offering while Balaam directed him.

II. God overruled the curse and turned it into a blessing, in love for Israel. Moses later gives this account of it (Deuteronomy 23:5). God put the blessing into Balaam’s mouth. While the sacrifices were burning, Balaam withdrew alone, likely to a dark grove on the hilltop (Deuteronomy 23:3, margin). He knew enough to understand that solitude gives a good chance for communion with God. Those who want to meet with him should withdraw from the noise of the world, its business, and its chatter. A person is never less alone than when alone, because the Father is with him. So we should enter our room and shut the door, trusting that God will meet us if we seek him rightly.

But Balaam went with only a doubtful hope. He thought God might meet him, yet his guilty conscience and God’s recent anger gave him reason to speak cautiously: “Maybe the Lord will meet me” (Numbers 23:3). A man like that should not expect any favor from God. In fact, it seems that while he claimed he was going to meet with God, he was really planning to use enchantments, as we see later (Numbers 24:1). But whatever Balaam intended, God meant to use him for his own glory, so he met Balaam (Numbers 23:4). What fellowship can light have with darkness? Certainly no friendly fellowship.

Balaam was still bent in the wrong way, and God still stood against him. Yet because Balak had chosen him as his spokesman, God would force him to speak words that honored God and Israel, words that would leave future attackers without excuse. When Balaam saw that God met him, likely through an angel, he boasted about what he had done: “I have prepared seven altars, and offered a bull and a ram on each one.” How had he done it? It cost him nothing, since Balak paid for it. Still, he boasted as if he had done some great thing. Acts of worship done in hypocrisy are often remembered with pride and vain glory, like the Pharisee who went to the temple to brag about his religion (Luke 18:11-12).

He also treated these sacrifices as if they should obligate God to give him what he wanted. He seemed to think God now owed him something, and that the payment should be Israel handed over to Moab’s hatred. This is a common trick people play on themselves. They imagine that outward acts of devotion will persuade God to excuse their worst sins, especially persecution (Isaiah 66:5). Yet even though the sacrifice itself was hateful, God used Balaam’s expectation to put a word into his mouth (Numbers 23:5). The answer of the tongue comes from the Lord, and this shows how wrong people are when they say, “Our tongue will prevail, our lips are our own” (Psalm 12:4). The God who made the mouth can direct it where he wills.

This is a warning to bold sinners who speak against heaven. God can make their own words fall back on them (Psalm 64:8). It is also a comfort to God’s servants, whom he may call to speak for him. If God put a word into Balaam’s mouth, a man who meant harm to God and Israel, then he will not fail those who want to honor him and help his people. He will give them the right words at the right time.

Balaam then spoke the blessing in Balak’s hearing. He found Balak standing by his burnt offering (Numbers 23:6), paying close attention and eagerly waiting for the result. Those who want a peaceful answer from God must stay near the sacrifice and wait on the Lord without distraction. They should not grow tired of doing good. Balaam, having taken his place where he had planned to pronounce curses against Israel, perhaps with the words already prepared, took up his speech and instead delivered a blessing (Numbers 23:7). He declared Israel safe and happy, and in that way he blessed them.

He first declared them safe, beyond the reach of his harmful words. He admitted that the whole plan had been to curse them. Balak had sent for him from his own land, and he had come for that purpose (Numbers 23:7). The message had been, “Come, curse Jacob for me, come, defy Israel.” Balak meant to wage war on them and wanted Balaam to bless his campaign and pray for Israel’s ruin. But Balaam also had to admit that the plan had failed, and that he could not carry it out. He could not even speak an evil word or wish against them: “How can I curse those whom God has not cursed?” (Numbers 23:8). Not that he was unwilling to do it, but that he was unable.

This is a fair confession. First, it admits the weakness and failure of Balaam’s own magic skill, the skill for which others valued him so highly, and no doubt he valued it highly too. He was the best-known man in that trade, and yet he has to admit that he has been defeated. God had already warned Israel not to use divination (Leviticus 19:31), and this event gave them a reason for that law by showing the weakness and foolishness of it.

As they had seen the magicians of Egypt made foolish, so here they saw the great conjurer of the east also brought to nothing. See Isaiah 47:12-14. Second, this is a confession of God’s rule and power over all things. Balaam admits that he could do no more than God allowed him to do, because God could overrule all his plans and throw his counsel down.

Third, it is a confession of the secure safety of God’s people. Note: 1. God owns Israel and blesses them. He has not cursed them, because they are freed from the curse of the law. He has not denounced them, rejected them, or abandoned them, though they were lowly and unworthy. 2. Those who have heaven’s favor will have hell’s hatred. The serpent and this offspring are set against them. 3. Even if the enemies of God’s people gain much against them, they still cannot curse them. They cannot bring real harm on them, much less destroy them, because they cannot separate them from the love of God (Romans 8:39).

He then speaks of them as happy in three ways. First, they are happy in being distinct from the rest of the nations. “From the top of the rock I see him” (Numbers 23:9). Balaam was surprised that, though he may have been told they were a rough and disorderly crowd, he found instead a well-ordered camp, with all the signs of discipline and good order. He saw them as a people dwelling alone, and he foresaw that they would remain so, and that their separateness would be their great honor.

We call people of rank “persons of distinction.” That was Israel’s praise, though their enemies treated it as a shame, that they differed from all the nearby nations, not only in their religion and sacred practices, but also in their food, dress, and daily customs. They were a people called out of the world and not meant to be shaped by it. They did not lose their good name until they mixed with the heathen (Psalm 106:35). Note, it is both the duty and the honor of those dedicated to God to be separated from the world and not walk according to its ways. Those who are careful about special duties may take comfort in special privileges, and Balaam seems to have had that in mind here. God’s Israel will not stand on the same level as other nations, but will be honored above them all as a people near to God and set apart for him.

Second, they are happy in their numbers. They were not as few and insignificant as Balaam had been led to think, but an countless people, which made them both honored and feared (Numbers 23:10). “Who can count the dust of Jacob?” The size of the people was what Balak feared most (Numbers 22:3). Moab was afraid of them because they were many, and God here, through Balaam, strengthens that fear by foretelling that they will increase still more. Balak had wanted Balaam to see only the farthest edge of the camp (Numbers 22:41), hoping that the more he saw, the more angry he would become and the sharper his curses would be. But the result was the opposite. Instead of anger at their numbers, Balaam admired them.

The better we know God’s people, the better we tend to think of them. Balaam notices, first, the dust of Jacob, that is, Jacob’s people, about whom it had been foretold that they would be as the dust for number (Genesis 28:14). In this way he admits that God was fulfilling the promise made to the fathers, and he expects that promise to be fulfilled even more. Perhaps David sinned when he numbered the people, because he tried to count the dust of Jacob, which God had said would be beyond counting.

Second, Balaam notices the fourth part of Israel, referring to the shape of their camp, which was arranged into four groups under four banners. Note, God’s Israel is a very large body, and so is his spiritual Israel. They will be shown to be so when they are all gathered to him on the great day (Revelation 7:9).

Third, they are happy in their end. “Let me die the death of the righteous Israelites, who are in covenant with God, and let my last end, or future state, be like theirs,” that is, let my reward in the other world be like theirs. Here, first, it is taken for granted that death is the end of all men. Even the righteous must die, and it is good for us to think about that personally, as Balaam himself does here, speaking of his own death.

Second, he assumes that the soul lives on after death, and that there is a different state beyond death. This is a noble witness to that truth, and evidence that it was known and believed in ancient times. For how could the death of the righteous be more desirable than the death of the wicked on any other ground, unless it meant happiness in another world? In the way and outward circumstances of dying, we see that things happen the same to everyone.

Third, he says the righteous are truly blessed, not only while they live, but also when they die. That makes their death not only more desirable than the death of others, but even more desirable than life itself, and his words may be taken that way. He does not only mean, “When I die, let me die the death of the righteous.” He seems also to say, “I would even now be willing to die, if only I might die the death of the righteous and reach my end this moment, provided it might be like his.”

Not far from where Balaam now stood, on one of the mountains of Moab, Moses died not long afterward, and perhaps God, who put these words in Balaam’s mouth, intended them to point that way, so Moses might be encouraged to go up and die such a death as Balaam himself wished for. Fourth, Balaam shows that his opinion of religion is better than his resolve. Many want to die the death of the righteous, but they do not try to live the life of the righteous. They would gladly have the same end, but not the same path. They want to be saints in heaven, but not saints on earth. This is the desire of the lazy, which destroys them, because their hands refuse to work.

Balaam’s words are only a wish, not a prayer, and it is a worthless wish, because he wants the end without caring about the means. So far this blessing reaches, even to death and beyond it, to the last end. Now, third, we are told how Balak was angered by it (Numbers 23:11).

He pretended to honor the Lord with his sacrifices and to wait for the answer God would send. Yet when the answer did not match his own wishes, he quickly forgot God and burst into anger against Balaam, as if Balaam alone had caused the result: “What have you done to me! How you have disappointed me!” At times, God makes the enemies of his church trouble one another, while the one who sits in heaven laughs at their helpless schemes.

2. Balaam was forced to accept this outcome. He gave in because he could not do otherwise, yet he handled the matter with skill, acting as if he were especially careful about duty. He answered Balak with the seriousness of a prophet: “Must I not be careful to speak what the Lord has put in my mouth?” (Numbers 23:12). In this way, a wicked prophet was made to admit God’s controlling power, which only increased the shame of a wicked prince.