Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Joshua 24:9
Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and warred against Israel, and sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you:
9. Then Balak the son of Zippor ] He is also mentioned in Jdg 11:25; Mic 6:5; Rev 2:14. The Israelites were at this time encamped in the plains of Shittim, “the meadow of the Acacias.”
and warred against Israel ] In conjunction with the Midianites (Num 22:1 ss).
sent and called Balaam ] (Num 22:5) from Pethor, far away from the encampment of the Israelites, beyond the Euphrates, among the mountains of the east, whence his fame had spread, across the Assyrian desert, to the shores of the Dead Sea. “As warrior chief (by that combination of soldier and prophet already seen in Moses himself) he ranked with the five kings of Midian” (Num 31:8).
to curse you ] For he was regarded throughout the whole East as a Prophet, whose blessing or whose curse was irresistible. Balak, who lacked the courage to meet the Israelites in arms, thought to lay upon them the powerful ban of the mighty seer. “Even at the present day the pagan Orientals, in their wars, have always their magicians with them to curse their enemies, and to mutter incantations for their ruin. In our own war with the Burmese, the generals of the natives had several magicians with them, who were much engaged in cursing our troops.” Kitto’s Bible Illustr. ii. 214.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 9. Then Balak – arose and warred against Israel] This circumstance is not related in Nu 22:1-41, nor does it appear in that history that the Moabites attacked the Israelites; and probably the warring here mentioned means no more than his attempts to destroy them by the curses of Balaam, and the wiles of the Midianitish women.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Balak warred against Israel.
Quest. How is this true, when
Balak did never fight against Israel, Jdg 11:25?
Answ. One prince may commence a war against another, though he never come to a battle, nor strike one stroke; so Balak warred, though not by open force, yet by crafty counsel and warlike stratagems, by magical arts, by wicked devices, by making bate betwixt them and God their confederate; or by warlike preparations, in case Balaams charms had succeeded, as may be gathered from Num 22:11; or at least by design or intention; things being oft said to be done both in Scripture and other authors which were only designed or intended, as here. Jos 24:11; Gen 37:21; Eze 24:13; Mat 5:28; Joh 10:32,33. And the old lawyers note,
That he is rightly called a thief or an adulterer, & c., who wanted nothing but occasion to be so.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Then Balak the son of Zippor, the king of Moab, arose,…. Being alarmed with what Israel had done to the two kings of the Amorites, and by their near approach to the borders of his kingdom:
and warred against Israel; he fully designed it, and purpose is put for action, as Kimchi observes; he prepared for it, proclaimed war, and commenced it, though he did not come to a battle, he made use of stratagems and wiles, and magical arts, to hurt them, and sent for Balaam to curse them, that they both together might smite the Israelites, and drive them out of the land, Nu 22:6; so his fighting is interpreted by the next clause:
and sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you; by which means he hoped to prevail in battle, and get the victory over them; but not being able to bring this about, durst not engage in battle with them.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(9) Warred against Israel.The sending for Balaam was a distinct act of hostility. Whether Balak himself ever led an army against Israel we are not informed. In the war with the Midianites, Balaam was slain; and there may have been Moabites allied and acting with the Midianites in the war in Numbers 31.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
9. Balak, king of the Moabites, wished to injure and destroy Israel, but there is no account of an actual attack by him. Numbers 23, 24; Jdg 11:25.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“ Then Balak the son of Zippor, the king of Moab, arose, and fought against Israel, and he sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you. But I would not listen to Balaam, therefore he blessed you still, so I delivered you out of his hand.”
Then the King of Moab came against Israel to ‘fight’ with them (Num 22:11), but he used different weapons. He called in Balaam, the son of Beor, a famous seer. Many would have considered him more of a threat than all the other armies put together. But even Balaam was subject to YHWH, and when he began to attempt a curse on Israel YHWH refused to listen to him (Deu 23:5) with the result that Balaam blessed Israel. (Note the implication that there was no god known to Balaam who could do anything about it). Thus were they delivered from the hand of Balaam and from the hand of Moab. Whether any actual fighting took place we were not told in Numbers, but there may well have been. However the gathering of his army by the King of Moab and the ‘assault’ through the activities of Balaam may well have been seen as ‘fighting’.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
VIII
BALAAM: HIS IMPORTANT PROPHECIES, HIS CHARACTER, AND HIS BIBLE HISTORY
Numbers 22-24; Num 31:8
These scriptures give you a clue to both Balaam’s history and character: Numbers 22-24; Num 31:8 , and especially Num 31:16 ; Deu 23:4-5 ; Jos 13:22 ; Jos 24:9-10 ; Mic 6:5 ; Neh 13:2 ; Jud 1:2 ; 2Pe 2:15 ; and, most important of all, Rev 2:14 . Anybody who attempts to discuss Balaam ought to be familiar with every one of these scriptures.
Who was Balaam? He was a descendant of Abraham, as much as the Israelites were. He was a Midianite and his home was near where the kinsmen of Abraham, Nahor and Laban, lived. They possessed from the days of Abraham a very considerable knowledge of the true God. He was not only a descendant of Abraham and possessed the knowledge of the true God through traditions handed down, as in the case of Job and Melchizedek, but he was a prophet of Jehovah. That is confirmed over and over again. Unfortunately he was also a soothsayer and a diviner, adding that himself to his prophetic office for the purpose of making money. People always approach soothsayers with fees.
His knowledge of the movements of the children of Israel could easily have been obtained and the book of Exodus expressly tells that that knowledge was diffused over the whole country. Such a poem as Jacob’s dying blessing on his children would circulate all over the Semitic tribes, and such an administration as that of Joseph would become known over all the whole world, such displays of power as the miracles in Egypt, the deliverance at the Red Sea and the giving of the law right contiguous to the territory of Balaam’s nation make it possible for him to learn all these mighty particulars. It is a great mistake to say that God held communication only with the descendants of Abraham. We see how he influenced people in Job’s time and how he influenced Melchizedek, and there is one remarkable declaration made in one of the prophets that I have not time to discuss, though I expect to preach a sermon on it some day, in which God claims that he not only brought Israel out of Egypt but the Philistines out of Caphtor and all peoples from the places they occupied (Amo 9:7 ). We are apt to get a very narrow view of God’s government of the human race when we attempt to confine it to the Jews only.
Next, we want to consider the sin of Balaam. First, it was from start to finish a sin against knowledge. He had great knowledge of Jehovah. It was a sin against revelation and a very vile sin in that it proceeded from his greed for money, loving the wages of unrighteousness. His sin reached its climax after he had failed to move Jehovah by divinations, and it was clear that Jehovah was determined to bless these people, when for a price paid in his hand be vilely suggested a means by which the people could be turned from God and brought to punishment. That was about as iniquitous a thing as the purchase of the ballots in the late prohibition election in Waco, for the wages of unrighteousness. His counsel was (Num 31:16 ) to seduce the people of Israel by bringing the Moabitish and Midianite evil women to tempt and get them through their lusts to attend idolatrous feasts.
In getting at the character of this man, we have fortunately some exceedingly valuable sermon literature. The greatest preachers of modern times have preached on Balaam, and in the cross lights of their sermons every young preacher ought to inform himself thoroughly on Balaam. The most famous one for quite a while was Bishop Butler’s sermon. When I was a boy, everybody read that sermon, and, as I recall it, the object was to show the self-deception which persuaded Balaam in every case that the sin he committed could be brought within the rules of conscience and revelation, so that he could say something at every point to show that he stood right, while all the time he was going wrong.
Then the great sermon by Cardinal Newman: “The dark shadow cast over a noble course by standing always on the ladder of advancement and by the suspense of a worldly ambition never satisfied.” He saw in Balaam one of the most remarkable men of the world, high up on the ladder and the way to the top perfectly open but shaded by the dark shadow of his sin. Then Dr. Arnold’s sermon on Balaam, as I recall, the substance being the strange combination of the purest form of religious belief with action immeasurably below it. Next the great sermon by Spurgeon with seven texts. He takes the words in the Bible, “I have sinned,” and Balaam is one of the seven men he discusses. Spurgeon preached Balaam as a double-minded man. He could see the right and yet his lower nature turned him constantly away from it, a struggle between the lower and higher nature. These four men were the greatest preachers in the world since Paul. I may modestly call attention to my own sermon on Balaam; that Balaam was not a double-minded man; that from the beginning this man had but one real mind, and that was greed and power, and he simply used the religious light as a stalking horse. No rebuff could stop him long. God might say, “You shall not go,” and he would say, “Lord, hear me again and let me go.” He might start and an angel would meet him and he might hear the rebuke of the dumb brute but he would still seek a way to bring about evil. I never saw a man with a mind more single than Balaam.
I want you to read about him in Keble’s “Christian Year.” Keble conceives of Balaam as standing on the top of a mountain that looked over all those countries he is going to prophesy about and used this language:
O for a sculptor’s hand,
That thou might’st take thy stand
Thy wild hair floating in the eastern breeze,
Thy tranc’d yet open gaze
Fix’d on the desert haze,
As one who deep in heaven some airy pageant aeea.
In outline dim and vast
Their fearful shadows cast
The giant forms of empires on their way
To ruin: one by one
They tower and they are gone,
Yet in the Prophet’s soul the dreams of avarice stay.
That is a grand conception. If he just had the marble image of a man of that kind, before whose eyes, from his lofty mountain pedestal were sweeping the pageants of mighty empires and yet in whose eyes always stayed the dreams of avarice. The following has been sculptured on a rock:
No sun or star so bright
In all the world of light
That they should draw to Heaven his downward eye:
He hears th’ Almighty’s word,
He sees the Angel’s sword,
Yet low upon the earth his heart and treasure lie.
That comes nearer giving a true picture of Balaam. That shows you a man so earth bound in his heart’s desire, looking at low things and grovelling that no sun or star could lift his eye toward heaven. Not even God Almighty’s word could make him look up, without coercion of the human will.
Now, you are to understand that the first two prophecies of Balaam came to him when he was trying to work divinations on God. In those two he obeys as mechanically as a hypnotized person obeys the will of the hypnotist. He simply speaks under the coercive power of God. In these first two prophecies God tells him what to say, as if a mightier hand than his had dipped the pen in ink and moved his hand to write those lines.
At the end of the second one when he saw no divination could possibly avail against those people, the other prophecies came from the fact that the Spirit of the Lord comes on him just like the Spirit came on Saul, the king of Israel, and he prophesied as a really inspired man. In the first prophecy he shows, first, a people that God has blessed and will not curse; second, he is made to say, “Let me die the death of the righteous and let my, last end at death and judgment be like his.” That shows God’s revelation to that people. The second prophecy shows why that is so: “God is not a man that he should repent.” “It is not worth while to work any divination. He has marked out the future of this nation.” Second, why is it that he will not regard iniquity in Jacob? For the purpose he has in view he will not impute their trespasses to them. The prophecy stops with this thought, that when you look at what this people have done and will do, you are not to say, “What Moses did, nor Joshua did, nor David,” but you are to say, “What God hath wrought!”
The first time I ever heard Dr. Burleson address young preachers, and I was not even a Christian myself, he took that for his text. He commenced by saying, “That is a great theme for a preacher. Evidently these Jews had not accomplished all those things. They were continually rebelling and wanting to go back, and yet you see them come out of Egypt, cross the Sea, come to Sinai, organized, fed, clothed, the sun kept off by day and darkness by night, marvellous victories accomplished and you are to say, ‘What God hath wrought!’ “
When the spiritual power comes on him he begins to look beyond anything he has ever done yet, to messianic days. There are few prophecies in the Bible more far-reaching than this last prophecy of Balaam. When he says of the Messiah, “I shall see him but not now,” it is a long way off. “My case is gone, but verily a star” the symbol of the star and sceptre carried out the thought of the power of the Messiah. So much did that prophecy impress the world that those Wise Men who came right from Balaam’s country when Jesus was born, remember this prophecy: “We have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.”
He then looks all around and there are the nations before him from that mountain top, and he prophesies about Moab and Amalek and passes on beyond, approaching even to look to nations yet unborn. He looks to the Grecian Empire arising far away in the future, further than anybody but Daniel. He sees the ships of the Grecians coming and the destruction of Asshur and the destruction of Eber, his own people. Then we come to the antitypical references later.
If you want a comparison of this man, take Simon Magus who wanted to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit so as to make money. That is even better than Judas, though Judas comes in. Judas had knowledge, was inspired, worked miracles, and yet Judas never saw the true kingdom of God in the spirit of holiness, and because he could not bring about the kingdom of which he would be treasurer for fifteen dollars he sold the Lord Jesus Christ. Those are the principal thoughts I wanted to add.
QUESTIONS
1. Who was Balaam?
2. How did he obtain his knowledge of God?
3. What was the sin of Balaam?
4. What was the climax of his sin?
5. What five sermons on Balaam are referred to? Give the line of thought in each.
6. Give Keble’s conception of Balaam.
7. What was the testimony sculptured on a rock?
8. Now give your own estimate of the character of Balaam.
9. How do you account for the first two prophecies?
10. How do you account for the other two?
11. In the first prophecy what does he show, what is he made to say and what does that show?
12. Give a brief analysis of the second prophecy.
13. Of what does the third prophecy consist?
14. Give the items of the fourth prophecy.
15. How did his messianic prophecy impress the world?
16. When was this prophecy concerning Amalek fulfilled? Ana. In the days of Saul. (1Sa 15 ).
17. Who was Asshur and what was his relation to the Kenites?
18. What reference here to the Grecians?
19. Who was Eber?
20. With what two New Testament characters may we compare?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Jos 24:9 Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and warred against Israel, and sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you:
Ver. 9. Then Balak arose and warred against Israel.] He did not actually war against them. Jdg 11:25 Sed fieri dicitur quod tentatur aut intenditur, saith Ribera upon Amo 9:5 . He did not, because he durst not. Howbeit, because he intended, if he could have compassed it, to fight with Israel, and prepared for that purpose, it is spoken of as a done thing. So Haman is said to have “laid his hands upon the Jews,” because he attempted it; Est 8:7 and the Jews to have stoned Christ, because they could have found in their hearts to have done it. Joh 10:31-33
“Qui, quid non potuit, non facit, ille facit.”
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
sent. Compare Num 22:5. Deu 23:4.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Num 22:5, Num 22:6-21, Deu 23:4, Deu 23:5, Jdg 11:25, Mic 6:5
Reciprocal: Num 23:13 – and curse me Num 24:10 – I called Neh 13:2 – hired Balaam Rev 2:14 – Balaam
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jos 24:9-10. Balak warred against Israel Not indeed by open force, but by crafty counsels, warlike stratagems, and wicked devices. I would not hearken unto Balaam It appears by this that Balaam had a great inclination to do what Balak desired, and that he asked leave of God to curse Israel; and therefore it is not strange that God, who permitted him simply to go, was highly angry with him for going with so wicked an intent, Num 22:22; Num 22:32. So I delivered you From Balaks malicious designs against you.