Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Numbers 24:23

And he took up his parable, and said, Alas, who shall live when God doeth this!

23. when God doeth this ] The only rendering which the words will bear is ‘on account of God appointing him.’ If Num 24:21-24 were all one poem, as some think, ‘him’ might refer to Asshur, appointed by God as an instrument of destruction.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

23, 24. Balaam’s last prophetic message. This is the most obscure of all the poems. The translation is uncertain, and no historical event is known to which the words can refer.

Kittim, derived from Kitti a town in Cyprus, was a name used for Greece; cf. Gen 10:4 (where Kittim is reckoned as a son of Javan, i.e. Greece), 1Ma 1:1; 1Ma 8:5 ; it was also used sometimes for the Western maritime powers generally; cf. Jer 2:10, Eze 27:6. In Dan 11:30 it is even referred to the Romans; cf. Vulg. ‘Italia’ in the present passage.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

When God doeth this – The eventual carrying away of the allies of Israel by Assyria presented itself to Balaam as the ruin of all peace and safety upon earth. One prediction was howerer, yet wanting, and is next given, namely, that the conquerors of the Kenites should fare no better than the Kenites themselves.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Verse 23. Who shall live when God doeth this!] There are two senses in which these words may be taken: –

1. That the event is so distant that none then alive could possibly live to see it.

2. That the times would be so distressing and desolating that scarcely any should be able to escape.

The words are very similar to those of our Lord, and probably are to be taken in the same sense: “Wo to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days.”

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

How calamitous and miserable will the state of the world be, when the Assyrian, and after him the Chaldean, shall overrun and overturn all these parts of the world! who will be able to live and keep his heart from fainting under such grievous pressures? how few will then escape the destroying sword!

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

23. who shall live when God doeththis!Few shall escape the desolation that shall send aNebuchadnezzar to scourge all those regions.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And he took up his parable, and said,…. Or delivered another prophecy, having made some little pause:

alas, who shall live when God doeth this? referring not to what goes before, but to what follows; though Jarchi and Aben Ezra think it refers to the Assyria conquering and carrying captive, not only the Kenites, but all the nations of the world, so that there was no living comfortably in it on his account; but this is said after Balaam had taken up his parable again, and so respects what follows, as the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander, in which Ashur or the Assyrians were included; and the destruction of the Jews by the Romans more especially; which was such as had not been the like from the beginning of the world, Mt 24:21, and perhaps may have a further respect to the affliction of the witnesses and church of Christ by antichrist; see Da 12:1.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The fourth saying applies to Asshur, and is introduced by an exclamation of woe: “ Woe! who will live, when God sets this! and ships (come) from the side of Chittim, and press Asshur, and press Eber, and he also perishes.” The words “Woe, who will live,” point to the fearfulness of the following judgment, which went deep to the heart of the seer, because it would fall upon the sons of his own people (see at Num 22:5). The meaning is, “Who will preserve his life in the universal catastrophe that is coming?” (Hengstenberg). , either “since the setting of it,” equivalent to “from the time when God sets (determines) this” ( , quando faciet ista Deus ; lxx, Vulg.), or “on account of the setting of it,” i.e., because God determines this. , to set, applied to that which God establishes, ordains, or brings to pass, as in Isa 44:7; Hab 1:12. The suffix in is not to be referred to Asshur, as Knobel supposes, because the prophecy relates not to Asshur “as the mighty power by which everything was crushed and overthrown,” but to a power that would come from the far west and crush Asshur itself. The suffix refers rather to the substance of the prophecy that follows, and is to be understood in a neuter sense. is “God,” and not an abbreviation of , which is always written with the article in the Pentateuch ( , Gen 19:8, Gen 19:25; Gen 26:3-4; Lev 18:27; Deu 4:42; Deu 7:22; Deu 19:11), and only occurs once without the article, viz., in 1Ch 20:8. , from (Isa 33:21), signifies ships, like in the passage in Dan 11:30, which is founded upon the prophecy before us. , from the side, as in Exo 2:5; Deu 2:37, etc. is Cyprus with the capital Citium (see at Gen 10:4), which is mentioned as intervening between Greece and Phoenicia, and the principal station for the maritime commerce of Phoenicia, so that all the fleets passing from the west to the east necessarily took Cyprus in their way (Isa 23:1). The nations that would come across the sea from the side of Cyprus to humble Asshur, are not mentioned by name, because this lay beyond the range of Balaam’s vision. He simply gives utterance to the thought, “A power comes from Chittim over the sea, to which Asshur and Eber, the eastern and the western Shem, will both succumb” ( v. Hoffmann). Eber neither refers to the Israelites merely as Hebrews (lxx, Vulg.), nor to the races beyond the Euphrates, as Onkelos and others suppose, but, like “all the sons of Eber” in Gen 10:21, to the posterity of Abraham who descended from Eber through Peleg, and also to the descendants of Eber through Joktan: so that Asshur, as the representative of the Shemites who dwelt in the far east, included Elam within itself; whilst Eber, on the other hand, represented the western Shemites, the peoples that sprang from Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram (Gen 10:21). “ And he also shall perish for ever: ” these words cannot relate to Asshur and Eber, for their fate is already announced in the word (afflict, press), but only to the new western power that was to come over the sea, and to which the others were to succumb. “Whatever powers might rise up in the world of peoples, the heathen prophet of Jehovah sees them all fall, one through another, and one after another; for at last he loses in the distance the power to discern whence it is that the last which he sees rise up is to receive its fatal blow” ( v. Hoffmann, p. 520). The overthrow of this last power of the world, concerning which the prophet Daniel was the fist to receive and proclaim new revelations, belongs to “the end of the days,” in which the star out of Jacob is to rise upon Israel as a “bright morning star” (Rev 22:16).

Now if according to this the fact is firmly established, that in this last prophecy of Balaam, “the judgment of history even upon the imperial powers of the West, and the final victory of the King of the kingdom of God were proclaimed, though in fading outlines, more than a thousand years before the events themselves,” as Tholuck has expressed it in his Propheten und ihre Weissagung; the announcement of the star out of Jacob, and the sceptre out of Israel, i.e., of the King and Ruler of the kingdom of God, who was to dash Moab to pieces and take possession of Edom, cannot have received its complete fulfilment in the victories of David over these enemies of Israel; but will only be fully accomplished in the future overthrow of all the enemies of the kingdom of God. By the “ end of days,” both here and everywhere else, we are to understand the Messianic era, and that not merely at its commencement, but in its entire development, until the final completion of the kingdom of God at the return of our Lord to judgment. In the “star out of Jacob,” Balaam beholds not David as the one king of Israel, but the Messiah, in whom the royalty of Israel promised to the patriarchs (Gen 17:6, Gen 17:16; Gen 35:11) attains its fullest realization. The star and sceptre are symbols not of “Israel’s royalty personified” (Hengstenberg), but of the real King in a concrete form, as He was to arise out of Israel at a future day. It is true that Israel received the promised King in David, who conquered and subjugated the Moabites, Edomites, and other neighbouring nations that were hostile to Israel. But in the person of David and his rule the kingly government of Israel was only realized in its first and imperfect beginnings. Its completion was not attained till the coming of the second David (Hos 3:5; Jer 30:9; Eze 34:24; Eze 37:24-25), the Messiah Himself, who breaks in pieces all the enemies of Israel, and founds an everlasting kingdom, to which all the kingdoms and powers of this world are to be brought into subjection (2Sa 7:12-16; Psa 2:1; 72, and Psa 110:1-7).

(Note: The application of the star out of Jacob to the Messiah is to be found even in Onkelos; and this interpretation was so widely spread among the Jews, that the pseudo-Messiah who arose under Hadrian, and whom even R. Akiba acknowledged, took the name of Bar Cochba (son of a star), on consequence of this prophecy, from which the nickname of Bar Coziba (son of a lie) was afterward formed, when he had submitted to the Romans, with all his followers. In the Christian Church also the Messianic explanation was the prevalent one, from the time of Justin and Irenaeus onwards (see the proofs in Calovii Bibl. ad h. l.), although, according to a remark of Theodoret ( qu. 44 ad Num.), there were some who did not adopt it. The exclusive application of the passage to David was so warmly defended, first of all by Grotius, and still more by Verschuir, that even Hengstenberg and Tholuck gave up the Messianic interpretation. But they both of them came back to it afterwards, the former in his “Balaam” and the second edition of his Christology, and the latter in his treatise on “the Prophets.” At the present time the Messianic character of the prophecy is denied by none but the supporters of the more vulgar rationalism, such as Knobel and others; whereas G. Baur (in his History of Old Testament Prophecy) has no doubt that the prediction of the star out of Jacob points to the exalted and glorious King, filled with the Holy Spirit, whom Isaiah (Isa 9:5; Isa 11:1.) and Micah ( Mic 5:2) expected as the royal founder of the theocracy. Reinke gives a complete history of the interpretation of this passage in his Beitrge, iv. 186ff.)

If, however, the star out of Jacob first rose upon the world in Christ, the star which showed the wise men from the east the way to the new-born “ King of the Jews,” and went before them, till it stood above the manger at Bethlehem (Mat 2:1-11), is intimately related to our prophecy. Only we must not understand the allusion as being so direct, that Balaam beheld the very star which appeared to the wise men, and made known to them the birth of the Saviour of the world. The star of the wise men was rather an embodiment of the star seen by Balaam, which announced to them the fulfilment of Balaam’s prophecy, – a visible sign by which God revealed to them the fact, that the appearance of the star which Balaam beheld in the far distant future had been realized at Bethlehem in the birth of Christ, the King of the Jews. – The “wise men from the east,” who had been made acquainted with the revelations of God to Israel by the Jews of the diaspora , might feel themselves specially attracted in their search for the salvation of the world by the predictions of Balaam, from the fact that this seer belonged to their own country, and came “out of the mountains of the east” (Num 23:7); so that they made his sayings the centre of their expectations of salvation, and were also conducted through them to the Saviour of all nations by means of supernatural illumination. “God unfolded to their minds, which were already filled with a longing for the ‘star out of Jacob’ foretold by Balaam, the meaning of the star which proclaimed the fulfilment of Balaam’s prophecy; He revealed to them, that is to say, the fact that it announced the birth of the ‘King of the Jews.’ And just as Balaam had joyously exclaimed, ‘I see Him,’ and ‘I behold Him,’ they also could say, ‘We have seen His star’ “ (Hengstenberg).

If, in conclusion, we compare Balaam’s prophecy of the star that would come out of Jacob, and the sceptre that would rise out of Israel, with the prediction of the patriarch Jacob, of the sceptre that should not depart from Judah, till the Shiloh came whom the nations would obey ( Gen 49:10), it is easy to observe that Balaam not only foretold more clearly the attitude of Israel to the nations of the world, and the victory of the kingdom of God over every hostile kingdom of the world; but that he also proclaimed the Bringer of Peace expected by Jacob at the end of the days to be a mighty ruler, whose sceptre would break in pieces and destroy all the enemies of the nation of God. The tribes of Israel stood before the mental eye of the patriarch in their full development into the nation in which all the families of the earth were to be blessed. From this point of view, the salvation that was to blossom in the future for the children of Israel culminated in the peaceful kingdom of the Shiloh, in whom the dominion of the victorious lion out of Judah was to attain its fullest perfection. But the eye of Balaam, the seer, which had been opened by the Spirit of God, beheld the nation of Israel encamped, according to its tribes, in the face of its foes, the nations of this world. They were endeavouring to destroy Israel; but according to the counsel of the Almighty God and Lord of the whole world, in their warfare against the nation that was blessed of Jehovah, they were to succumb one after the other, and be destroyed by the king that was to arise out of Israel. This determinate counsel of the living God was to be proclaimed by Balaam, the heathen seer out of Mesopotamia the centre of the national development of the ancient world: and, first of all, to the existing representatives of the nations of the world that were hostile to Israel, that they might see what would at all times tend to their peace – might see, that is to say, that in their hostility to Israel they were rebelling against the Almighty God of heaven and earth, and that they would assuredly perish in the conflict, since life and salvation were only to be found with the people of Israel, whom God had blessed. And even though Balaam had to make known the purpose of the Lord concerning His people primarily, and in fact solely, to the Moabites and their neighbours, who were like-minded with them, his announcement was also intended for Israel itself, and was to be a pledge to the congregation of Israel for all time of the certain fulfilment of the promises of God; and so to fill them with strength and courage, that in all their conflicts with the powers of this world, they should rely upon the Lord their God with the firmest confidence of faith, should strive with unswerving fidelity after the end of their divine calling, and should build up the kingdom of God on earth, which is to outlast all the kingdoms of the world. – In what manner the Israelites became acquainted with the prophecies of Balaam, so that Moses could incorporate them into the Thorah, we are nowhere told, but we can infer it with tolerable certainty from the subsequent fate of Balaam himself.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

(23) When God doeth this.These words may be rendered, since (or, from the time that) God sets (or, determines) it (or, this)quando faciet ista Deus (Vulgate); or, because God determines it (or, this).

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

23, 24. Alas, who shall live The woe touches the heart of Balaam because his own Mesopotamia is involved in the fearful judgment. See Num 22:5.

Chittim Signifies (1) the island of Cyprus, (Isa 23:1😉 (2) the Chittim islands, denoting the islands and coasts of the West, (Jer 2:10😉 and (3) Macedonia and Italy. Dan 11:30. Keil seems to combine all these meanings, since all the Western ships took Cyprus in their way. “The nations that would come across the sea from the side of Cyprus to humble Asshur are not mentioned by name, because this lay beyond the range of Baalam’s vision.”

Eber The Seventy and Vulgate, Hebrews. Evidently all the posterity of Eber through Abraham.

He also shall perish forever The conquering power from the West. Dan 7:26. “The judgment of history even upon the imperial powers of the West, and the final victory of the King of the kingdom of God were proclaimed, though in fading outlines, more than a thousand years before the events themselves.” Tholuck. “So it came to pass when the ships of Cyprus, of Greece, of Europe, then just seen in the horizon of human hopes and fears, did at last, under the Macedonian conqueror, turn the tide of Eastern invasion backward; and Asshur and Babylon and Persia, no less than the wild hordes of the desert, perished forever from the earth.” Stanley.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Balaam Prophesies Concerning Eber (Israel and their fellow Semites) ( Num 24:23-24 ).

Num 24:23 a

‘And he took up his oracle, and said,’

We note immediately that he did not ‘look on’ those of whom he now spoke.

Num 24:23-24 (23b-24)

“Alas, who shall live when God does this?

But ships will come from the coast of Kittim,

And they shall afflict Asshur, and shall afflict Eber,

And he also shall come to destruction.”

The Asshurim may waste the Kenites but they themselves would not escape judgment. They in their turn would be afflicted by ships from Kittim (Cyprus and the Aegean coastlands). It would seem that exploratory raids, if not worse, had already been taking place by the ‘Sea People’, the relatives of the Philistines, and he recognised that these would afflict the Asshurim, treating them as they had treated the Kenites. When brother fights brother judgment awaits.

The same also applied to Eber. This referred to Semites in the area (Gen 10:25) and may well have been intended indirectly to signify Israel, who would be one of those to suffer at Philistine hands, for Abraham was descended from Peleg, Eber’s son, a descent which was emphasised by appearing on its own and not in the Table of Nations (Gen 10:25 with Gen 11:16-18).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Num 24:23 And he took up his parable, and said, Alas, who shall live when God doeth this!

Ver. 23. Who shall live when, &c. ] The Assyrian, that rod of God’s wrath, that overflowing scourge, shall take all afore him, shall bereave millions of their lives, as Caesar is said to have done; and of Mohammed, the first Emperor of the Turks, it is storied that he had been in his time the death of eight hundred thousand men a

a Turk. Hist.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)