Some points in this case deserve special examination.——In the passage (Num. 22: 9–35) it appears that God positively forbade Balaam’s going at all, yet that the second embassy, greater in number and of nobler rank and offering richer pay (v. 15) touched Balaam in his most sensitive point and made him long to go. So he told the men to tarry and he would see if he could get permission. According to the record (v. 20) the Lord said to him that night: “If the men come to call thee, rise up and go with them”; yet the real meaning must be—If you will go, and if my prohibition avails nothing, go; but do when there according to my word. Balaam was glad to go; but “God’s anger was kindled because he went” (v. 22)—a fact which shows very clearly what sort of permission God had given him. It can not well be doubted that Balaam knew he was going, contrary to the real mind of the Lord; for when did the Lord ever give a real permission, and then kindle into anger because his permission was accepted? Or when did he ever leave an honest inquirer after the way of duty tofollow his supposed permission and then take such offense as in this case at what was in its purpose true obedience?——Yet while God always deals honestly with the honest inquirer after his will, he may sometimes, both in word and in providence, let men who love their own will better than his take their course and bear their own responsibilities. Such I take to have been the Lord’s policy in this case.

The record sets forth that God used the ass on which Balaam rode to “rebuke with man’s voice the madness of the prophet.” The ass saw what Balaam’s dull eye saw not—the angel of the Lord with drawn sword, heading him in his way—a fact strikingly suggestive of his dull vision in regard to comprehending the spirit of that apparent permission which the Lord gave him to go. Why did he not see that he was led on, not by God’s will, but by his own cupidity, his own intense and over-mastering covetousness? Alas for him; the eye of his ass could see what his cultured intellect could not discern—that God was squarely against him. It was moreover fully the Lord’s purpose, if Balaam would go, to hold him back from Balak’s influence and compel him to bless Israel. This renewed, special charge on this point seems to have been one object in this remarkable meeting of the angel, Balaam and his ass.

Does any one ask—How could an ass speak with man’s voice? Were real words uttered, words which any other ears within hearing could have heard as well as Balaam’s? Or was it simply a miraculous sensation upon his ear, having no cause whatever in the mouth of the ass?——I answer: It is of small avail to push such inquiries. We can say wisely but two things:—​(a.) That God could work a miracle as easily in one of these ways as in the other:—and (b.) Therefore the method which the description most naturally suggests is the most probable; viz. that the ass spake audible words, and Balaam heard them as men are wont to hear words audibly spoken.

The points of real prophecy in Balaam’s visions should be noticed.

Observe that in each case, before Balaam inquired of God he directed Balak to prepare seven altars and to offer upon each one bullock and one ram. The objectin this seems to have been to propitiate the Lord and secure his favorable consideration. It is remarkable that Balaam, coming from the region of the Euphrates, should have these ideas as to the sacrifice of clean animals. The fact seems to show that the idea of animal sacrifices was revealed to the race in its infancy and that it prevailed extensively over the Eastern world.

The offerings having been made, Balaam retired to “an high place” (23: 3) as our version puts it, but really to a hill of bare, naked summit to await the Lord’s presence and word there. [Such a summit was chosen for its range of view]. The Lord came and gave him his word for Balak, put thus: “Balak, the king of Moab, hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the East, saying: ‘Come, curse me, Jacob; come, defy [in the sense only of curse, maledict] Israel.’ How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed? Or how shall I defy whom God hath not defied”? [How can I gainsay the Almighty; how put my word against his? Balak asks this of me: I have no power to do it].——“From the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo! the people shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations.”——From his naked mountain top Balaam saw their encampment spread out before him; there they were, a peculiar, secluded people, having neither political, social, or religious connection with any other nation under heaven. In this most salient feature of their case Balaam saw a symbol of their whole future history—dwelling alone, a scattered people, never reckoned as being of or like any other nation of the earth.——Their great numbers also were prophetic of their prosperous future: “Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel”?—the reference to a “fourth part” coming of the fact that their encampment was in four parts, three tribes to each.——His closing words are weighty: “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.”——In interpreting these words I can by no means assent to the view of many commentators (largely German) who suppose Balaam had no ideas of a happy future life, it being as they maintain far too early in the progress of religious thought for any such ideas. They therefore restrict his meaning to a happy earthly life,prosperous even to its natural end in death.——I have no faith in such interpretations. They do not come by any fair construction from the text. What Balaam said was: “Let my soul die the death of the righteous, and let my after destiny be like his.” After destiny—the afterpart of my existence, is the legitimate sense of the word here used.——Besides, to pray that I may die of the same disease, at the same age, amid the same surroundings, as the righteous, is very tame, is a very insignificant blessing at best, and no sensible man could put his soul very earnestly into such a prayer. I see no reason why we should emasculate the prayer even of a Balaam in this style. Let us rather say that he prayed like one “whose eyes were open; who had heard the words of God and knew the knowledge of the most High and saw the vision of the Almighty” (24: 15, 16) as he himself said.——As to toning down the sense of his words because their Christian construction would be so far in advance of the age, I can not accept the assumed fact that they were in advance of the age. I can not believe that Enoch, “walking with God” and translated to heaven knew nothing of heaven until he found himself there; or that Noah whose faith and whose preaching of righteousness breasted the wickedness of that whole generation had no thoughts as to the blessed world to come; nor that Abraham’s faith was limited to the hills and to the corn and wine of Canaan and had never an outlook of longing desire and assured hope of a “better country even an heavenly one” (Heb. 11: 16); nor that Moses, “esteeming reproach for Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt,” had no “respect to the [future] recompense of reward.” The writer to the Hebrews reasons far better than the Neological critics as to the faith and the hopes of those glorious patriarchs. I find my sense of fitness and my convictions of truth far better met in his reasoning than in their speculations.

Let it be noted that Balaam spake as one versed in moral distinctions. He understood that the blessed future life falls to the lot, not of the wicked but of the righteous. When a man comes so near to God as he seems to have done in these hours, this distinction must be seen and felt.——That this most appropriate prayer should have proved in his case utterly unavailingis a sad and mournful fact to which we must give some attention in its place.

Balak was by no means pleased with Balaam’s “parable.” Indeed he retorts sharply: “What hast thou done to me? I sent for thee and was to pay thee to curse that people, and now thou hast blessed them altogether”—with blessings and nothing else.——But Balak proposes to try again. Perhaps if the great soothsayer shall see them from the top of Pisgah, he may get a different view and may utter the much desired imprecation upon them. The same process is gone through, of burnt-offerings and of withdrawing for a private interview with God; after which Balak eagerly inquires: “What has the Lord spoken” now? Has he changed his mind? Has he given you leave to curse the Hebrew people?——The answer is pertinent and very decided, but not any more to his mind than the former:—“God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless; and he hath blessed, and I can not reverse it. He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel; the Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them. God brought them out of Egypt; he has as it were the strength of a unicorn. Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel; according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought? Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion; he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain” (Num. 23: 19–24).

At this point of time Israel was on the threshold of Canaan. Sihon and Og had fallen. The spirit of a pure and vigorous faith in God was never more thoroughly national than in this generation. As between Moab and Israel, the contrast was never greater. God’s people as seen by his prophetic eye were on the eve of sublime victories. No enchantment or divination could have force against them. That was the era in their history when it might fitly become a standing exclamation:—“What hath God wrought”?