Commentaria in Numeros
FROM ARAM (from Mesopotamia, which in Hebrew is called Aram-naharaim, as I said in chapter 22, verse 5) BALAC HATH BROUGHT ME.
8. HOW SHALL I CURSE HIM WHOM GOD HATH NOT CURSED?—Note: not only the tongue, but the mind also of Balaam, at least for the time in which he prophesied this, was changed by God, so that, whereas before he had wished to curse the Hebrews, now he blessed them. For Balaam here was not a seized one (arreptitius), as the Sibyls were, and the maiden in the temple of Delphic Apollo, into whom Phoebus himself, that is, a demon, entered, and by whirling her on the ground and forcing her to foam at the mouth, answered through her mouth all the things about which he was asked; yet the maiden herself understood none of these, but was as it were beside herself, and in frenzy, and after she ceased to rave did not remember what had been said. See Virgil, Aeneid VI. But Balaam understood all these things, nay had already conceived them all beforehand and committed them to memory, namely when he alone heard them from the angel meeting him, verse 5. Nor is the angel read to have spoken afterward in the prophecy itself to him or through him. Again, that he said these things from his mind and in earnest is plain from what he adds: “Let my soul die the death of the just.” God therefore did not move the mouth of Balaam as the mouth of the speaking ass; for Balaam was moved as a man, not as a brute. God therefore impelled his will and enlightened his intellect, that piously and willingly, and from the heart, he might speak these things. Abulensis, however, holds the contrary, namely that Balaam, persisting in the impious will of cursing, blessed under compulsion and unwillingly, from the fact that God moved his mouth, though unwilling, and formed in it these words with which he blessed Israel; and he proves it from what Balaam says in verse 12: “Can I speak any thing else but what the Lord commandeth?” But that does not compel: for “I cannot” there is the same as “it is not lawful,” “it is not right.”
The former opinion which I gave is therefore the truer, and it is confirmed by chapter 24, verse 4, where it is said: “And when Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord that he should bless Israel, etc., the spirit of God rushing upon him, he said.” Soon, however, after the prophecy Balaam returned to his disposition, and sought means of satisfying Balac and of cursing the Hebrews: and this is all that St. Gregory means, Pastoral Rule part III, Admonition 13, when he says that Balaam changed his voice, not his mind. For St. Gregory explains himself in the way I have said, Moral. book XXXIII, chapter 26. In like manner Saul among the Prophets prophesied, and sang praises to God; but departing from them returned to his disposition, and went on to persecute David: both Saul therefore and Balaam remained in the hardness of heart and the impiety habitual to them, which each, the good Spirit of God withdrawing, shortly after exerted as before. Morally: like Balaam and Saul are Christians who live in concubinage, hatreds, drunkenness, possession of goods unjustly acquired, and at Easter, or at the point of death, are contrite and purpose amendment; but presently, freed from the feast or the danger, return to concubines, hatreds, cups and unjust possessions: let these fear for themselves, and await an end and catastrophe such as Saul and Balaam had. Abarbanel continues: “which posterity and all the goods promised a second and third time to Abraham, then to Isaac, and finally to Jacob, all belong to that first age. Those words of Balaam, who can count the dust of Jacob, are also to be compared with those said by God to Jacob, and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth. Finally, the Israelites had grown to so great a number, as Balaam said, while they dwelt in Egypt, in that first age, I say: for almost as many were numbered when Balaam spoke these things as had been numbered when they went out of Egypt.” This first parable, therefore, is sufficiently clearly a mere history of the things done in the first age. Of the second and the others we shall speak below.
from this precipitous mountain I shall observe the camp of Israel, and shall delight in beholding it as the camp of God, beautiful, and finely distributed and ordered by its tribes, battle-lines and standards, and shall pleasantly enjoy it.
THIS PEOPLE SHALL DWELL ALONE—as if to say: Israel shall be remote, in dominion and in fellowship, from all other peoples, as being Gentiles and idolaters, and shall serve the one true God by its own laws and rites, because these are wholly different from the laws and customs of all other peoples; whence “and among” them “it shall not be reputed,” that is, shall not be reckoned, because it will not be numbered among the Gentiles, nor accounted among them. The Chaldee (who here and elsewhere often judaizes) translates: behold a people shall alone possess the world; for this the Jews expect under the Messias, that they alone may rule over the whole earth.
10. WHO CAN COUNT THE DUST OF JACOB (that is, as the Chaldee translates: Who shall be able to count the little ones of the house of Jacob? of whom it was said, Genesis 13:16, that they “shall be multiplied as the dust of the earth”; whence, explaining, he adds) AND KNOW THE NUMBER OF THE STOCK OF ISRAEL?—In Hebrew it is, and know the number of the fourth part of Israel. In this song, as in others, in the Hebrew manner, the same thing is repeated and explained in the latter half-verse which was said in the former (1).
Perhaps of the just, namely the Israelites, as is clear from the sequence of the discourse, by an allusion to the letters, with which the name of the Israelites begins.
Modern interpreters ask whether by these words of Balaam is signified the blessed hope of immortality, which the divine doctrine had shown to the dying Israelites. Michaelis affirms it. Hengstenberg raises doubts, both because this sentiment seems less apt to this place, and because in the Pentateuch this hope of blessed immortality is nowhere found expressed so vividly and with such yearning. So also Meignan, op. cit. p. 547 ff. Balaam, he says, nothing else
LET MY SOUL DIE THE DEATH OF THE JUST, AND MY LAST END BE LIKE TO THEM.—“My soul,” that is, I: for soul is taken for the man, as a part for the whole, by synecdoche. So also it is taken by Samson, when he says: “Let my soul die with the Philistines”; for the soul in itself cannot die, but yet to the body and to the man it seems as it were to die when it is separated from him. So it is said in 1 Machabees 1:38, “They slew a thousand souls,” that is, a thousand men, and 3 Kings 1:12: “Save thy soul,” that is, thyself, and thy life, that thou mayest preserve thy soul in thy body. There are many like instances in Scripture.
Note: The camp of Israel is called the camp of the just, from the better and worthier part, although in it there were more impious than just. In like manner the Church is called holy, although in it there are more impious. The sense is therefore, as if Balaam said: Would that it might befall me to die so joyful and happy a death as the faithful and just Israelites will die, knowing that they pass to a better life, namely to blessed immortality! The same is said today by the impious, atheists and politicians, when they seriously and sincerely consider the present and future state of man; so great is the force of truth. All the wicked, therefore, desire a good death, but flee a good life, because to die well is happiness, but to live well is laborious: yet the one is not granted without the other. Eternity depends on death, death on a good or bad life; choose: to have perished once is for ever.
Lately a certain prince, a heretic, or rather a Politique, yet of good disposition and talent, being asked what he thought of Catholics and Calvinists, whose faith was the truer, answered shrewdly that he preferred to live with the Calvinists but to die with the Catholics, because the death of the latter was the more joyful and secure, the life of the former the more licentious and pleasant. But he would have said more soundly and more fitly to salvation: Since I prefer to die with Catholics, I prefer to live with them also; for a good death depends on a good life, and it is impossible for one who lives heretically or ill to die well and happily. More prudently, therefore, and more profitably for himself, would Balaam have said: “Let my soul live the life of the just, that it may die the death of the just.” For he who lives the life of the godly will certainly die the death of the godly: and he who lives the life of the ungodly will certainly die the death of the ungodly, and that once and for ever.
Lamachus the centurion rebuked a soldier for a fault committed; and when he acknowledged the fault and said that he would henceforth commit nothing of the kind, he answered: “In war it is not lawful to sin twice.” So Plutarch in the Laconic Sayings. But in death it is not lawful to sin even once. For this sin is irrevocable; once dead, thou art dead for ever; once ill dead, thou art damned; through all eternity. Nothing else does he here wish for himself than that, after a long and prosperous life, loaded with divine benefits, he may die in peace, like him of whom Holy Scripture says: “And decaying he died in a good old age, and of a long life, and full of days: and was gathered to his people,” Genesis 25:8.