Numbers 24:3

And he took up his parable, and said, Balaam the son of Beor hath said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(3) Balaam the son of Beor hath said.—The Hebrew word (neum) is imperfectly rendered by hath said. It is the word which is commonly used in the prophetical books of Scripture to denote a Divine saying, and is rarely used when a human author is named. It occurs in the Pentateuch only in Genesis 22:16, Numbers 14:28, and in this chapter, where it is found in Numbers 24:3-4; Numbers 24:15-16.

The man whose eyes are open.—There is great diversity of opinion respecting the meaning of the word which is here rendered open, and which, as it is here written, occurs in no other place. If shatham is identified with satham, it means to close, not to open. The meaning, however, of this verse is sufficiently explained by that which follows, whichever rendering of the word shethum is adopted. Balaam appears to have been thrown into an ecstatic state, as was Saul, and as were many of the ancient prophets; and whilst the eye of the outer senses was closed, the eye of the inner senses was preternaturally opened.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

24:1-9 Now Balaam spake not his own sense, but the language of the Spirit that came upon him. Many have their eyes open who have not their hearts open; are enlightened, but not sanctified. That knowledge which puffs men up with pride, will but serve to light them to hell, whither many go with their eyes open. The blessing is nearly the same as those given before. He admires in Israel, their beauty. The righteous, doubtless, is more excellent than his neighbour. Their fruitfulness and increase. Their honour and advancement. Their power and victory. He looks back upon what had been done for them. Their power and victory. He looks back upon what had been done for them. Their courage and security. The righteous are bold as a lion, not when assaulting others, but when at rest, because God maketh them to dwell in safety. Their influence upon their neighbours. God takes what is done to them, whether good or evil, as done to himself.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Whose eyes are open - i. e., opened in inward vision, to discern things that were hidden from ordinary beholders.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

3. the man whose eyes are open—that is, a seer (1Sa 9:9), a prophet, to whom the visioned future was disclosed—sometimes when falling into a sleep (Ge 15:12-15), frequently into "a trance."

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The eyes, either,

1. Of his body, as in the following verse; or,

2. Of his mind, which God had opened in a peculiar and prophetical manner, whence prophets are called seers, 1 Samuel 9:9. He implies that before he was blind and stupid, having eyes, but not seeing nor understanding. Some render the words having his eyes shut, as the Hebrew verb satham signifies, the letters schin and samech being frequently exchanged; and so the meaning is, that he received this revelation either in a dream, when men’s eyes are simply shut; or in an ecstasy or trance, when men’s eyes, though open, are in a manner shut, to wit, as to the use and exercise of them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he took up his parable,.... His parable of prophecy, as the Targums, his prophetic speech, which, with a loud voice, he expressed in the hearing of Balak and his nobles:

and said, Balaam the son of Beor hath said; the preface to his prophecy is pompous, and seems to be full of pride and vanity, and so the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem represent him;"the man who is more excellent than his father hath said, to whom hidden secrets, even what was hidden from the prophets is revealed to him;''and the Jews have a saying (t) that he that has an evil eye, a haughty spirit, and a large soul, or is covetous, is one of the disciples of Balaam the wicked:

and the man whose eyes are open hath said; or, as some (u) render it, whose eyes were shut, but now open; either the eyes of his body, which were shut when the angel met him, and the ass saw him and not he, but afterwards were open, and he saw him also; or the eyes of his understanding blinded with ambition and covetousness, but were open to see his mistake, at least so far as to be sensible that he could never prevail upon God to allow him to curse Israel; or rather open, by the spirit of prophecy coming on him, whereby he saw and foretold things to come.

(t) Pirke Abot, c. 5. sect. 19. (u) So V. L. Montanus, Tigurine version, &c.

Geneva Study Bible

And he took up his parable, and said, Balaam the son of Beor hath said, and the man whose eyes {b} are open hath said:

(b) His eyes were shut up before in respect to the clear visions which he saw after.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

3, 4. The opening triplet is as follows:

The oracle of Balaam son of Beor.

The oracle of the man whose eye is (?) closed.

The oracle of one that heareth the words of God.

The form of it should be compared with 2 Samuel 23:1, where the same word ‘oracle’ is used. The text appears to be corrupt. The word rendered ‘closed’ is very doubtful; and ‘opened’ (R.V. marg.) is no less questionable. With the former rendering the reference is to the eyes closed in a trance; with the latter, to the eyes of the mind opened to receive the vision.

3–9. Balaam’s first prophetic message. In its present form this consists of nine couplets and two triplets. But the text has undergone corruption, and perhaps there were originally eleven couplets.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 3. - Balaam... hath said. Rather, "the utterance of Balaam." נְאֻם is constantly used, as in Numbers 14:28, for a Divine utterance, effatum Dei, but it does not by itself, apart from the context, claim a superhuman origin. The man whose eyes are open. הַגֶּבֶר שְׁתֻם הָעָיִן. The authorities are divided between the rendering in the text and the opposite rendering given in the margin. סָתַם is used in Daniel 8:26, and שָׂתָם in Lamentations 3:8, in the sense of "shut;" but, on the other hand, a passage in the Mishnah distinctly uses שׁתם and סתם in opposite senses. The Vulgate, on the one hand, has obturatus; the Septuagint, on the other, has ὁ ἀληθινῶς ὁρῶν, and this is the sense given by the Targums. Strange to say, it makes no real difference whether we read "open" or "shut," because in any case it was the inward vision that was quickened, while the outward senses were closed. Numbers 24:3

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Numbers 24:3 and Numbers 24:4 contain the preface to the prophecy: "The divine saying of Balaam the son of Beor, the divine saying of the man with closed eye, the divine saying of the hearer of divine words, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down and with opened eyes." For the participial noun נאם the meaning divine saying (effatum, not inspiratum, Domini) is undoubtedly established by the expression יהוה נאם, which recurs in Numbers 14:28 and Genesis 22:16, and is of constant use in the predictions of the prophets; and this applies even to the few passages where a human author is mentioned instead of Jehovah, such as Numbers 24:3, Numbers 24:4, and Numbers 24:15, Numbers 24:16; also 2 Samuel 23:1; Proverbs 30:1; and Psalm 36:2, where a נאם is ascribed to the personified wickedness. Hence, when Balaam calls the following prophecy a נאם, this is done for the purpose of designating it as a divine revelation received from the Spirit of God. He had received it, and now proclaimed it as a man העין שׁתם, with closed eye. שׁתם does not mean to open, a meaning in support of which only one passage of the Mishnah can be adduced, but to close, like סתם in Daniel 8:26, and שׁתם in Lamentations 3:8, with the שׁ softened into ס or שׂ (see Roediger in Ges. thes., and Dietrich's Hebrew Lexicon). "Balaam describes himself as the man with closed eye with reference to his state of ecstasy, in which the closing of the outer senses went hand in hand with the opening of the inner" (Hengstenberg). The cessation of all perception by means of the outer senses, so far as self-conscious reflection is concerned, was a feature that was common to both the vision and the dream, the two forms in which the prophetic gift manifested itself (Numbers 12:6), and followed from the very nature of the inward intuition. In the case of prophets whose spiritual life was far advanced, inspiration might take place without any closing of the outward senses. But upon men like Balaam, whose inner religious life was still very impure and undeveloped, the Spirit of God could only operate by closing their outward senses to impressions from the lower earthly world, and raising them up to visions of the higher and spiritual world.

(Note: Hence, as Hengstenberg observes (Balaam, p. 449), we have to picture Balaam as giving utterance to his prophecies with the eyes of his body closed; though we cannot argue from the fact of his being in this condition, that an Isaiah would be in precisely the same. Compare the instructive information concerning analogous phenomena in the sphere of natural mantik and ecstasy in Hengstenberg (pp. 449ff.), and Tholuck's Propheten, pp. 49ff.)

What Balaam heard in this ecstatic condition was אל אמרי, the sayings of God, and what he saw שׁדּי מחזה, the vision of the Almighty. The Spirit of God came upon him with such power that he fell down (נפל), like Saul in 1 Samuel 19:24; not merely "prostrating himself with reverential awe at seeing and hearing the things of God" (Knobel), but thrown to the ground by the Spirit of God, who "came like an armed man upon the seer," and that in such a way that as he fell his (spirit's) eyes were opened. This introduction to his prophecy is not an utterance of boasting vanity; but, as Calvin correctly observes, "the whole preface has no other tendency than to prove that he was a true prophet of God, and had received the blessing which he uttered from a celestial oracle."

The blessing itself in Numbers 24:5. contains two thoughts: (1) the glorious prosperity of Israel, and the exaltation of its kingdom (Numbers 24:5-7); (2) the terrible power, so fatal to all its foes, of the people which was set to be a curse or a blessing to all the nations (Numbers 24:8, Numbers 24:9).