15-17==
The answer with which Balaam had sent the Moabitish messengers away, encouraged Balak to cherish the hope of gaining over the celebrated soothsayer to his purpose notwithstanding, and to send an embassy “of princes more numerous and more honourable than those,” and to make the attempt to overcome his former resistance by more splendid promises; whether he regarded it, as is very probable, “as the remains of a weakly fear of God, or simply as a ruse adopted for the purpose of obtaining better conditions” (Hengstenberg). As a genuine heathen, who saw nothing more in the God of Israel than a national god of that people, he thought that it would be possible to render not only men, but gods also, favourable to his purpose, by means of splendid honours and rich rewards.[1]
verses 18-21
But Balaam replied to the proposals of these ambassadors: “If Balak gave me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot transgress the mouth (command) of Jehovah, my God, to do little or great,” i.e., to attempt anything in opposition to the will of the Lord (cf. 1Sa 20:2; 1Sa 22:15; 1Sa 25:36). The inability flowed from moral awe of God and dread of His punishment. “From beginning to end this fact was firmly established in Balaam's mind, viz., that in the work to which Balak summoned him he could do nothing at all except through Jehovah. This knowledge he had acquired by virtue of his natural gifts as seer, and his previous experience. But this clear knowledge of Jehovah was completely obscured again by the love for the wages which ruled in his heart. Because he loved Balak, the enemy of Israel, for the sake of the wages, whereas Jehovah loved Israel for His own name's sake; Balaam was opposed to Jehovah in his inmost nature and will, though he knew himself to be in unison with Him by virtue of his natural gift. Consequently he fell into the same blindness of contradiction to which Balak was in bondage” (Baumgarten). And in this blindness he hoped to be able to turn Jehovah round to oppose Israel, and favour the wishes of his own and Balak's heart. He therefore told the messengers to wait again, that he might ask Jehovah a second time (Num 22:19). And this
- ↑ Compare the following remarks of Pliny (h. n. xxviii. 4) concerning this belief among the Romans: “Verrius Flaccus auctores ponit, quibus credat, in oppugnationibus ante omnia solitum a Romanis sacerdotibus evocari Deum, cujus in tutela id oppidum esset, promittique illi eundem aut ampliorem apud Romanos cultum. Et durat in Pontificum disciplina id sacrum, constatque ideo occultatum, in cujus Dei tutela Roma esset, ne qui hostium simili modo agerent;” - and the further explanations of this heathen notion in Hengstenberg's Balaam and his Prophecies.
