Numbers 22:1. The verse appears to be the continuation of P’s itinerary in Numbers 21:10-11; cf. Numbers 33:48.

the steppes of Moab] A term, peculiar to P , which denotes the open plain, immediately to the north of the Dead Sea, about 9 miles from north to south and from 5 to 7 miles broad. The similar plain on the west of Jordan is named ‘the steppes of Jericho’ (Joshua 4:13; Joshua 5:10).

on the other side of the Jordan] i.e. on the east. The expression is from the point of view of a writer in Palestine.

the Jordan at Jericho] lit. ‘the Jordan of Jericho,’ i.e. that portion of the river which flows by the town. Cf. ‘the waters of Megiddo’ (Jdg 5:19).

Numbers 22:2-24. The story of Balaam (J E ).

The narratives of J and E are, to a large extent, so closely interwoven that it is difficult to separate them. But in certain portions the differences between them stand out clearly, and will be indicated in the notes.

An approximate analysis is as follows:—

E . Numbers 22:2-3 a, Numbers 22:5 a (to ‘River’), Numbers 22:8-10; Num 22:12-16; Num 22:19-21; Num 22:35-41.

J . Numbers 22:3 b, Numbers 22:4, Numbers 22:5 b – Numbers 22:7; Num 22:11; Num 22:17-18; Num 22:22-34.

The object of this well-known narrative is to illustrate the all-important thought ‘if God be for us who can be against us?’ Jehovah holds Israel under His protection, and therefore provides that they shall receive a blessing and not a curse. Pharaoh’s obstinacy in opposing Jehovah in Egypt is paralleled, at the end of the journeyings, by the obstinacy of Balak, and the result is that the divine curse falls upon Moab (Numbers 24:17) among other foes of Israel. A further interest in the story is the character of Balaam, which, however, has sometimes been allowed such undue prominence as to throw into the shade the real religious import of the narrative. His character has been very variously estimated according as one or another feature in the narrative is emphasized; see e.g. Stanley, Jewish Church, and Lock in J.Th.S. ii. 161–3. This variety of estimate results from the fact that the narrative is not homogeneous. In E , so far as it has been preserved, no blame attaches to his character. It is true that in J (Numbers 22:5 b – Numbers 22:7; Num 22:11; Num 22:17-18) Balak expects him to do the work of a prophet for money, but this did not necessarily imply avarice; it was a not uncommon feature of early Israelite life; Samuel (1 Samuel 9:8), Ahijah (1 Kings 14:3), Elisha (2 Kings 8:8 f.) and Amos (Amos 7:12) were expected to do the same. [Note: Amos’ reply to Amaziah (Amos 7:14) shews that the great prophets of Israel rose superior to the practice of the earlier ‘sons of the prophets’; he had never been one who would ‘eat bread’ by prophesying. And from that time onwards it is probable that prophesying for payment was condemned by the better minds in the nation.] And when it came to the point, Balaam declared that no amount of gold or silver would persuade him to oppose the will of Jehovah his God by cursing Israel. The idea that he was forced to utter blessings mechanically though he wanted to curse is quite absent from the story, and ought not to be read into it. In J we only learn that Jehovah was angry with him because he went (see on Numbers 22:22), no reason being assigned, or perhaps rather the reason assigned having dropped out of the narrative when it was combined with E . In D (Deuteronomy 23:4 f., Joshua 24:9 f.) we meet for the first time with the thought that Balaam wanted to curse for hire, but was prevented by God, cf. Nehemiah 13:2. Lastly in P (Numbers 31:16) a different, and terrible, sin is related of him. He persuaded the Israelites to commit sin with the Midianite women at Peor, and thus brought calamity upon God’s people after all (Numbers 31:16). The dark estimate of his character is adopted in the N.T.: avarice (Judges 11, 2 Peter 2:15-16), and the teaching of idolatry and fornication (Revelation 2:14).

PRELIMINARY NOTE TO CHAPTER 22-24. That this section of the Book of Numbers has a character to a great extent peculiar and isolated is evident upon the face of it. The arguments indeed derived from its language and style to prove that it is by a different hand from the rest of the Book are obviously too slight and doubtful to be of any weight; there does not seem to be any more diversity in this respect than the difference of subject matter would lead us to expect. The peculiarity, however, of this section is evident from the fact that these three chapters, confessedly so important and interesting in themselves, might be taken away without leaving any perceptible void. From Numbers 22:1 the narrative is continued in chapter 25, apparently without a break, and in that chapter there is no mention of Balaam. It is only in chapter 31. (verses 8, 16) that two passing allusions are made to him: in the one his death is noted without comment; in the other we are made acquainted for the first time with a fact which throws a most important light upon his character and career, of which no hint is given in the section before us. Thus it is evident that the story of Balaam's coming and prophecies, although imbedded in the narrative (and that in the fight place as to order of time), is not structurally connected with it, but forms an episode by itself. If we now take this section, which is thus isolated and self-contained, we shall not fail to see at once that its literary character is strikingly peculiar. It is to all intents and purposes a sacred drama wherein characters and events of the highest interest are handled with consummate art. No one can be insensible to this, whatever construction he may or may not put upon it. Probably the story of Balaam was never made the subject of a miracle play, because the character of the chief actor is too subtle for the crude intelligence of the age of miracle plays. But if the sacred drama were ever reintroduced, it is certain that no more effective play could be found than that of Balaam and Balak. The extraordinary skill with which the strangely complex character of the wizard prophet is drawn out; the felicity with which it is contrasted with the rude simplicity of Balak; the picturesque grandeur of the scenery and incident; and the art with which the story leads up by successive stages to the final and complete triumph of God and of Israel, are worthy, from a merely artistic point of view, of the greatest of dramatic poets. There is no such minute drawing out of an isolated character by means of speech and incident to be found in the Old Testament, unless it be in the Book of Job, the dramatic form of which serves to give point to the comparison; but few would fail to see that the much more subtle character of Balaam is far more distinctly indicated than that of Job. Balaam is emphatically a "study," and must have been intended to he so. Yet it must be remembered that it is only to modern eyes that this part of the varied truth and wisdom of Holy Scripture has become manifest. To the Jew Balaam was interesting only as a great foe, greatly baffled; as a sorcerer whose ghostly power and craft was broken and turned backward by the God of Israel (Deuteronomy 23:5; Joshua 13:22; Joshua 24:10; Micah 6:5). To the Christian of the first age he was only interesting as the Scriptural type of the subtlest and most dangerous kind of enemy whom the Church of God had to dread - the enemy who united spiritual pretensions with persuasions to vice (Revelation 2:14). To the more critical intellects of later ages, such even as Augustine and Jerome, he was altogether a puzzle; the one regarding him as prophetam diaboli, whose religion was a mere cloak for covetousness; the other as prophetam Dei, whose fall was like unto the fall of the old prophet of Bethel. The two parallel allusions to his character in 2 Peter 2:15, 16; Jude 1:11 do not take us any further, merely turning upon the covetousness which was his most obvious fault. Unquestionably, however, Balaam is most interesting to us, not from any of these points of view, but as a study drawn by an inspired hand of a strangely but most naturally mixed character, the broad features of which are constantly being reproduced, in the same unhallowed union, in men of all ]ands and ages. This is undeniably one of the instances (not perhaps very numerous) in which the more trained and educated intelligence of modern days has a distinct advantage over the simpler faith and intenser piety of the first ages. The conflict, or rather the compromise, in Balaam between true religion and superstitious imposture, between an actual Divine inspiration and the practice of heathen sorceries, between devotion to God and devotion to money, was an unintelligible puzzle to men of old. To those who have grasped the character of a Louis XI, of a Luther, or of an Oliver Cromwell, or have gauged the mixture of highest and lowest in the religious movements of modern history, the wonder is, not that such an one should have been, but that such an one should have been so simply and yet so skillfully depicted. Two questions arise pre-eminently out of the story of Balaam which our want of knowledge forbids us to answer otherwise than doubtfully.

I. Whence did Balaam derive his knowledge of the true God, and how far did it extend? Was he, as some have argued, a heathen sorcerer who took to invoking Jehovah because circumstances led him to believe that the cause of Jehovah was likely to be the winning cause? and did the God whom he invoked in this mercenary spirit (after the fashion of the sons of Sceva) take advantage of the fact to obtain an ascendancy over his mind, and to compel his unwilling obedience? Such an assumption seems at once unnatural and unnecessary. It is hardly conceivable that God should have bestowed a true prophetic gift upon one who stood in such a relation to him. Moreover, the kind of ascendancy which the word of God had over the mind of Balaam is not one which springs from calculation, or from a mere intellectual persuasion. The man who lives before us in these chapters has not only a considerable knowledge of, but a very large amount of faith in, the one true God; he walks with God; he sees him that is invisible; the presence of Gods and God's direct concern about his doings are as familiar and unquestioned elements of his everyday life as they were of Abraham's. In a word (whatever difficulties a shallow theology may find in the fact), he has religious faith in God, a faith which is naturally strong, and has been further intensified by special revelations of the unseen; and this faith is the basis and condition of his prophetic gift. Balaam's religion, therefore, on this side was neither an hypocrisy nor an assumption; it was a real conviction which had grown up with him and formed part of his inner self. It is true that in Joshua 13:22 he is called a soothsayer (kosem), a name of reproach and infamy among the Jews (cf. 1 Samuel 15:23, "witchcraft;" Jeremiah 14:14, "divination"); but no one doubts that he played for gain the part of a soothsayer, employing with more or less of inward unbelief and contempt the arts of heathen sorcery; and it was quite natural that Joshua should recognize only the lower and more obvious side of his enemy's character. It remains then to consider how Balaam, living in Mesopotamia, could have had so considerable a knowledge of the true God; and the only satisfactory answer is this, that such knowledge had never disappeared from that region. Every glimpse which is afforded us of the descendants of Nahor in their Mesopotamian home confirms the belief that they were substantially at one with the chosen family in religious feeling and religious speech. Bethuel and Laban acknowledged the same God, and called him by the same name as Isaac and Jacob (Genesis 24:50; Genesis 31:49). No doubt idolatrous practices prevailed in their household (Genesis 31:19; Genesis 35:2; Joshua 24:2), but that, however dangerous, was not fatal to the existence of the true faith amongst them, any more than is the existence of a similar cultus amongst Christians. Centuries had indeed passed away since the days of Laban, and during those centuries we may well conclude that the common people had developed the idolatrous practices of their fathers, until they wholly obscured the worship of the one true God. But the lapse of years and the change of popular belief make little difference to the secret and higher teaching of countries like the Mesopotamia of that age, which is intensely conservative both for good and evil. Men like Balaam, who probably had an hereditary claim to his position as a seer, remained purely monotheistic in creed, and in their hearts called only upon the God of all the earth, the God of Abraham and of Nahor, of Melchizedec and of Job, of Laban and of Jacob. If we knew enough of the religious history of that land, it is possible that we might be able to point to a tolerably complete succession of gifted (in many cases Divinely-gifted) men, servants and worshippers of the one true God, down to the Magi who first hailed the rising of the bright and morning Star. There is connected with this question another of much narrower interest which causes great perplexity. Balaam (and indeed Balak too) freely uses the sacred name by which God had revealed himself as the God of Israel (see on Exodus 6:2, 3). There are two views of this matter, one or other of which is tolerably certain, and for both of which much may be said: either the sacred name was widely known and used beyond the limits of Israel, or else the sacred historian must have freely put it into the mouths of people who actually used some other name. There are also two views both of which may be summarily rejected, because their own advocates have reduced them to absolute absurdity: the one is, that the use of the two names Elohim and Jehovah shows a difference of authorship; the other, that they are employed by the same author with variety of sense - Elohim (God) being the God of nature, Jehovah (the Lord) the God of grace. It is no doubt true that there are passages where the sole use, or the pointed use, of one or other of these names does really point to a diversity either of authorship or of meaning; but it is abundantly clear that in the general narrative of Scripture, including these chapters, not the least distinction whatever can be drawn between the use of Elohim and Jehovah which will stand the simplest test of common sense; the same ingenuity which explains the occurrence of Elohim instead of Jehovah in any particular sentence would find an explanation quite as satisfactory if it were Jehovah instead of Elohim.

II. Whence did Moses obtain his knowledge of the incidents here recorded, many of which must have been known to Balaam alone? Was it directly, by revelation; or from some memorials left by Balaam himself? The former supposition, once generally held, is as generally abandoned now, because it is perceived that inspiration over-ruled and utilized for Divine purposes, but did not supersede, natural sources of information. The latter supposition is rendered more probable by these considerations: -

1. That a man of Balaam's character and training would be very likely to put on record the remarkable things which had happened to himself. Such men who habitually lead a double life are often keenly. alive to their own errors, and are singularly frank in writing themselves down for the benefit of posterity.

2. That Balaam was slain among the Midianites, and that his effects must have fallen into the hands of the victors. On the other hand, it is inconceivable that Balaam, being what he was, should have written these chapters at all as they stand; the moral and religious intent of the story is too evident in itself, and is too evidently governed by Jewish faith and feeling. It may be allowable to put it before the reader as an opinion which may or may not be true, but which is quite compatible with profound belief in the inspired truth of this part of God's word, that Moses, having obtained the facts in the way above indicated, was moved to work them up into the dramatic form in which they now appear - a form which undoubtedly brings out the character of the actors, the struggle between light and darkness, and the final triumph of light, with much more force (and therefore much more truth) than anything else could. If it be objected that this gives a fictitious character to the narrative, it may be replied that when the imagination is called into exercise to present actual facts, existing characters, and prophecies really uttered in a striking light, - and that under the over-ruling guidance of the Divine Spirit, - the result cannot be called fictitious in any bad or unworthy sense. If it be added that such a theory attributes to this section a character different from the rest of the Book, it may be allowed at once. The episode of Balaam and Balak is obviously, as to literary form, distinct from and strongly contrasted with the narrative which precedes and follows. It has been made a question as to the language in which Balaam and his companions spoke and wrote. The discovery of the Moabite stone has made it certain that the language of the Moabites, and in all probability of the other races descended from Abraham and Lot, was practically the same as the language of the Jews. Balaam's own tongue may have been Aramaic, but amongst his western friends and patrons he would no doubt he perfectly ready to speak as they spoke.

CHAPTER 22:1-40. THE COMING OF BALAAM (verses 2-40). Numbers 22:1After the defeat of the two Amorite kings, Sihon and Og, and the conquest of their kingdoms in Gilead and Bashan, the Israelites removed from the height of Pisgah, on the mountains of Abarim before Nebo (see at Numbers 21:20), and encamped in the "Arboth Moab (the steppes of Moab), on the other side of the Jordan of Jericho," i.e., that part of the Jordan which skirted the province of Jericho. Arboth Moab was the name given to that portion of the Arabah, or large plain of the Jordan, the present Ghor (see at Deuteronomy 1:1), which belonged to the territory of the Moabites previous to the spread of the Amorites under Sihon in the land to the east of the Jordan, and which probably reached from the Dead Sea to the mouth of the Jabbok. The site of the Israelitish camp is therefore defined with greater minuteness by the clause "beyond the Jordan of Jericho." This place of encampment, which is frequently alluded to (Numbers 26:3, Numbers 26:63; Numbers 31:12; Numbers 33:48, Numbers 33:50; Numbers 35:1; Numbers 36:13; Joshua 13:32), extended, according to Numbers 33:49, from Beth-jeshimoth to Abel-shittim. Beth-jeshimoth (i.e., house of wastes), on the north-eastern desert border (Jeishimon, Numbers 21:20) of the Dead Sea, a town allotted to the tribe of Reuben (Joshua 12:3; Joshua 13:20), was situated, according to the Onom. (s. v.Beethasimou'th, Bethsimuth), ten Roman miles, or four hours, to the south (S.E.) of Jericho, on the Dead Sea; according to Josephus (bell. jud. iv. 7, 6), it was to the south of Julias (Livias), i.e., Beth-haram, or Rameh, on the northern edge of the Wady Hesban (see at Numbers 32:36), or in the Ghor el Seisabn, on the northern coast of the Dead Sea, and the southern end of the plain of the Jordan. Abel Shittim (השּׁטּים אבל), i.e., the acacia-meadow, or, in its briefer form, Shittim (Numbers 35:1), was situated, according to Josephus (Ant. iv. 8, 1), on the same spot as the later town of Abila, in a locality rich in date-palms, sixty stadia from the Jordan, probably by the Wady Eshtah to the north of the Wady Hesban; even if Knobel's supposition that the name is connected with אשׁטה equals שׁטּה with א prost. should not be a tenable one. From Shittim or Sittim the Israelites advanced, under Joshua, to the Jordan, to effect the conquest of Canaan (Joshua 3:1).

In the steppes of Moab the Israelites encamped upon the border of the promised land, from which they were only separated by the Jordan. But before this boundary line could be passed, there were many preparations that had to be made. In the first place, the whole congregation was to pass through a trial of great importance to all future generations, as bearing upon the relation in which it stood to the heathen world; and in the second place, it was here that Moses, who was not to enter Canaan because of his sin at the water of strife, was to bring the work of legislation to a close before his death, and not only to issue the requisite instructions concerning the conquest of the promised inheritance, and the division of it among the tribes of Israel, but to impress once more upon the hearts of the whole congregation the essential contents of the whole law, with all that the Lord had done for Israel, that they might be confirmed in their fidelity to the Lord, and preserved from the danger of apostasy. This last work of the faithful servant of God, with which he brought his mediatorial work to a close, is described in the book of Deuteronomy; whilst the laws relating to the conquest and partition of Canaan, with the experience of Israel in the steppes of Moab, fill up the latter portion of the present book.

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