manner as before (cf. 1Sa 27:8; 1Sa 30:1.; 2Sa 8:12).[1] מלכּו, his king, is not any one particular king of Israel, but quite generally the king whom the Israelites would afterwards receive. For מלכּו is substantially the same as the parallel מלכתו, the kingdom of Israel, which had already been promised to the patriarchs (Gen 17:6; Gen 35:11), and in which the Israelites were first of all to obtain that full development of power which corresponded to its divine appointment; just as, in fact, the development of any people generally culminates in an organized kingdom. - The king of Israel, whose greatness was celebrated by Balaam, was therefore neither the Messiah exclusively, nor the earthly kingdom without the Messiah, but the kingdom of Israel that was established by David, and was exalted in the Messiah into an everlasting kingdom, the enemies of which would all be made its footstool (Psa 2:1-12 and Psa 110:1-7).
In Num 24:8 and Num 24:9, Balaam proclaims still further: “God leads him out of Egypt; his strength is as that of a buffalo: he will devour nations his enemies, and crush their bones, and dash them in pieces with his arrows. He has encamped, he lies down like a lion, and like a lioness: who can drive him up? Blessed be they who bless thee, and cursed they who curse thee!” The fulness of power that dwelt in the people of Israel was apparent in the force and prowess with which their God brought them out of Egypt. This fact Balaam repeats from the previous saying (Num 23:22), for the purpose of linking on to it the still further announcement of the manner in which the power of the nation would show itself upon its foes in time to come. The words, “he will devour nations,” call up the image of a lion, which is employed in Num 24:9 to depict the indomitable heroic power of Israel, in words taken from Jacob's blessing in Gen 49:9. The Piel גּרם is a denom. verb from גּרם, with the meaning to destroy, crush the bones, like שׁרשׁ, to root out (cf. Ges. §52, 2; Ewald, §120, e.). הצּיו is not the object to ימחץ; for מחץ, to dash to pieces, does not apply to arrows, which may be broken in pieces, but not dashed to pieces; and the singular suffix in חצּיו can only apply to the singular idea in the verse, i.e., to Israel, and not to
- ↑ Even on the supposition (which is quite at variance with the character of all the prophecies of Balaam) that in the name of Agag, the contemporary of Saul, we have a vaticinium ex eventu, the allusion to this particular king would be exceedingly strange, as the Amalekites did not perform any prominent part among the enemies of Israel in the time of Saul; and the command to exterminate them was given to Saul, not because of any special harm that they had done to Israel at that time, but on account of what they had done to Israel on their way out of Egypt (comp. 1Sa 15:2 with Exo 17:8).
