Commentaria in Numeros
1. And Balaam said to Balac: Build me here seven altars, and prepare as many calves, and the same number of rams. 2. And when he had done according to the word of Balaam, they laid a calf and a ram together upon every altar. 3. And Balaam said to Balac: Stand a little by thy burnt offering, till I go, to see if the Lord will meet me, and whatsoever he shall command I will speak to thee. 4. And when he was gone in haste, God met him. And Balaam spoke to him: I have erected seven altars, and have laid a calf and a ram on them. 5. And the Lord put a word in his mouth, and said: Return to Balac, and thus shalt thou speak. 6. Returning, he found him standing by his burnt offering, and all the princes of the Moabites. 7. And taking up his parable, he said: Balac the king of the Moabites hath brought me from Aram, from the mountains of the east: Come, said he, and curse Jacob: make haste, and detest Israel. 8. How shall I curse him whom God hath not cursed? By what means shall I detest him whom the Lord detesteth not? 9. I shall see him from the tops of the rocks, and shall behold him from the hills. This people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reputed among the nations. 10. Who can count the dust of Jacob, and know the number of the stock of Israel? Let my soul die the death of the just, and my last end be like to them. 11. And Balac said to Balaam: What is this that thou dost? I sent for thee to curse my enemies, and on the contrary thou blessest them. 12. And he answered him: Can I speak any thing else but what the Lord commandeth? 13. Balac therefore said to him: Come with me to another place, from whence thou mayst see a part of Israel, and mayst not be able to see them all: and from thence curse them. 14. And when he had brought him into a high place, upon the top of mount Phasga, Balaam built seven altars, and laying a calf and a ram on every altar, 15. He said to Balac: Stand here by thy burnt offering, till I go to meet him. 16. And when the Lord had met him, and put a word in his mouth, he said: Return to Balac, and thou shalt speak thus to him. 17. He returned, and found him standing by his burnt offering, and the princes of the Moabites with him. And Balac asked him: What hath the Lord spoken? 18. But he taking up his parable, said: Stand, Balac, and hearken: hear, thou son of Sephor. 19. God is not as a man, that he should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should be changed. Hath he said then, and will he not do? hath he spoken, and will he not fulfil? 20. I am brought to bless, the blessing I am not able to hinder. 21. There is no idol in Jacob, neither is there an image seen in Israel. The Lord his God is with him, and the noise of the victory of the king in him. 22. God hath brought him out of Egypt, whose strength is like to the rhinoceros. 23. There is no soothsaying in Jacob, nor divination in Israel. In their times it shall be told to Jacob and to Israel what God hath wrought. 24. Behold the people shall rise up as a lioness, and lift itself up as a lion, it shall not lie down till it devour the prey, and drink the blood of the slain. 25. And Balac said to Balaam: Neither curse him, nor bless him. 26. And he said: Did I not tell thee, that whatsoever God should command me, that I would do? 27. And Balac said to him: Come, and I will bring thee to another place, to try if perhaps it may please God that thou mayst curse them from thence. 28. And when he had brought him upon the top of mount Phogor, which looketh towards the desert, 29. Balaam said to him: Build me here seven altars, and prepare as many calves, and the same number of rams. 30. Balac did as Balaam had said, and laid calves and rams on every altar.
1. AND BALAAM SAID TO BALAC: BUILD ME HERE SEVEN ALTARS, AND PREPARE AS MANY CALVES.—Balaam ordered these altars to be erected, first, to sacrifice, not to God, nor to the true God of the Hebrews, as Eugubinus will have it: for Balac would not have permitted that; but to Baal, or the demon: for these were the high places of Baal, as went before in the chapter preceding, last verse. Secondly, for the superstition of divination, and to search out augury by them, as will be said in the next chapter, verse 1; whence he ordered precisely seven altars to be made, and on each two victims to be burnt, a calf namely and a ram, and that with the cooperation of Balac the idolatrous king: whence also in verse 3 he calls it his burnt offering; although in verse 4, the angel meeting him beyond hope, he feigns openly that he had erected these altars in honour of the Lord, to win the angel to himself.
Why seven altars? He erected seven altars either on account of the seven planets: for he seems himself to have been a genethliacal astrologer, who divined from the horoscope and the inspection of the stars, says Abulensis; or because the number seven is a symbol of perfection, and therefore is used in sacred rites; whence he ordered seven calves and rams to be sacrificed, to divine from their entrails, that is, from the inspection of the viscera: for this is the office of a soothsayer, such as this Balaam was, as is plain from chapter 22, verse 5. Or, finally, he did this from superstition.
For magicians and sorcerers chiefly observe certain numbers, whence also they do nothing by an even number, but everything by an odd. Hence Virgil, Eclogue 8:
“Three threads, divided in three colours, first I put about thee, and thrice I lead the image round these altars: the god delights in the odd number.”
Allegorically, Balac, which in Hebrew is the same as licking and devouring, signifies the devil; Balaam, that is, the people of vanity, signifies the Scribes and Pharisees, who at the instigation of the demon wished to curse and destroy Christ and Christians, who are the true Israelites; but God turned their malediction and the death of the cross into blessing and glory. So Rabanus.
for to him Balac with Balaam had offered this burnt offering; for Balaam here sought augury, as is said in the next chapter, verse 4, that is, divination, namely the demon himself, with whom, as was his custom, he might speak in secret, and from whom he might hear the responses which he would carry to Balac. So Cyril, book VI On Adoration; Augustine, sermon 103 De Tempore, Ambrose, book VI, epistle 37, Nyssen, On the Life of Moses, near the end, Procopius and Rabanus here.
You will say: for “the Lord” the Hebrew has Jehovah, which is the Hebrew name.
I answer that Balaam did not say Jehovah (for he had never heard this name), but used another name by which the Moabites were wont to call God (who was to them not the true God, but Baal, or the demon); but Moses, because he wrote not in Moabite but in Hebrew, substituted for it the Hebrew name Jehovah.
4. AND WHEN HE WAS GONE IN HASTE.—Vatablus and the Hebrews translate, and when he had gone to the high places; for this also the Hebrew shephi signifies. Others translate, and when he had gone alone.
GOD MET HIM.—“God,” that is, a good angel sent by God, or “God,” not by Himself but by His angel; for although Balaam did not seek Him, but his own demon, nevertheless of his own accord a good angel thrust himself in and met him, and that to promote the glory both of God and of the Hebrews; as for the Pythoness, who was consulting the demon for Saul, not an evil but the good spirit of Samuel thrust himself in.
But the angel met him in visible form, and, as follows, “came against him,” in an assumed body; which Balaam seeing, first saluted him for honour’s sake, and addressed him, saying: “I have erected seven altars”; he does not say to whom: perhaps because he doubted whether he who met him was a demon or God; yet he tacitly intimates that he had erected these altars to him who met him, in which matter he lied. St. Augustine rightly says, on Psalm 63: “Simulated justice is a double iniquity.”
3. STAND A LITTLE, IF PERHAPS THE LORD MEET ME.—“The Lord,” namely Baal, or the demon. Morally: Again the Emperor Jovian truly said, “flatterers (such as was this Balaam) do not God,
Hence it was very fitly chosen by an enchanter for taking auguries. So the Sibyl of Cumae, Deiphobe, priestess of Phoebus and Trivia, in Virgil, Aeneid VI, 38, 39:
“Now it were well to slay seven bullocks from the unyoked herd, and as many chosen sheep, after the custom.”
flatterers worship not God but the purple: and are very like the Euripus, which is hurled now to this side, now to that,” as Socrates is witness, book III, chapter 21. Bion, being asked what was the most harmful animal of all: “If,” said he, “you ask of wild beasts, the tyrant; if of tame, the flatterer.” So Laertius.
Diogenes called a smooth and flattering speech a honeyed snare. The same said that “it is better to fall among crows than among flatterers.” So Laertius.
Epictetus said: “Crows pluck out the eyes of the dead; but flatterers, corrupting the minds of the living, take from them all sight.”
Phavorinus said: “As Actaeon perished by his own nurtured dogs, so parasites ruin those by whom they are fed.”
“As the dog is by nature hostile to the hare, so is the flatterer to his friend,” says Antonius in the Melissa, part I. Whence Aristotle, Ethics IX: “He who feigns himself a friend, and is not, is worse than he who has made false coin.”
5. AND THE LORD PUT A WORD IN HIS MOUTH—as if to say: The angel suggested to him, and taught him what he should say to Balac himself. Note: the angel here does not rebuke the lie, the hypocrisy and the idolatry of Balaam; but dissembles it, because he knew him to be an idolater, a magician, wicked and incorrigible; whence he tells him only those things which belonged to the present matter, namely to the embassy of Balac, and its cause.
7. AND TAKING UP HIS PARABLE, HE SAID.—A grave, beautiful and acute prophecy he calls a parable. For the Hebrew mashal, which our version often translates parable, signifies any sentence that is eminent and illustrious, and as it were chief among sentences, such as are the maxims, proverbs and parables of the wise, likewise the oracles of the Prophets. For the root mashal signifies to rule and to be chief. Hence the Mishle are called the Parables of Solomon, his grave and moral sentences. Add that in this prophecy of Balaam many similitudes and parables properly so called are mingled.
To Patrizi the opinion of Isaac Abarbanel (Comment. on this place) seems quite true, that in the first four discourses or parables of Balaam are described the four ages of the Israelitic people. That it is so he demonstrates thus: “The first parable (23:7–10) embraces the first age of the Israelites, from the beginnings of the whole race to its departure from Egypt. For Balaam recalls the separation of the Israelites from the other nations (verse 9), which is to be traced from their very origin, when Abraham was led out of Chaldea by God, and innumerable posterity was promised him, which also Balaam mentions in verse 9, by no means passing over the other goods which God had then promised to Abraham (verse 8).