the power of its God, Israel was invincible, and would crush all its foes. “Behold, it rises up, a people like the lioness, and lifts itself up like the lion. It lies not down till it eats dust, and drinks the blood of the slain.” What the patriarch Jacob prophesied of Judah, the ruler among his brethren, in Gen 49:9, Balaam here transfers to the whole nation, to put to shame all the hopes indulged by the Moabitish king of the conquest and destruction of Israel.
verses 25-28
Balaam's Last Words. - Num 23:25-30. Balak was not deterred, however, from making another attempt. At first, indeed, he exclaimed in indignation at these second sayings of Balaam: “Thou shalt neither curse it, nor even bless.” The double גּם with לא signifies “neither - nor;” and the rendering, “if thou do not curse it, thou shalt not bless it,” must be rejected as untenable. In his vexation at the second failure, he did not want to hear anything more from Balaam. But when he replied again, that he had told him at the very outset that he could do nothing but what God should say to him (cf. Num 22:38), he altered his mind, and resolved to conduct Balaam to another place with this hope: “peradventure it will please God that thou mayest curse me them from thence.” Clericus observes upon this passage, “It was the opinion of the heathen, that what was not obtained through the first, second, or third victim, might nevertheless be secured through a fourth;” and he adduces proofs from Suetonius, Curtius, Gellius, and others.
verses 29-30
He takes the seer “to the top of Peor, which looks over the face of the desert” (Jeshimon: see at Num 21:20), and therefore was nearer to the camp of the Israelites. Mount Peor was one peak of the northern part of the mountains of Abarim by the town of Beth-peor, which afterwards belonged to the Reubenites (Jos 13:20), and opposite to which the Israelites were encamped in the steppes of Moab (Deu 3:29; Deu 4:46). According to Eusebius (Onom. s. v. Φογώρ), Peor was above Libias (i.e., Bethharam),[1] which was situated in the valley of the Jordan; and according to the account given under Araboth
- ↑ Ὑυπέρκειται δὲ τῆς νῦν Λιβαίδος καλουμένης. Jerome has “in supercilio Libiados.”
