Numbers 24 Study Notes

24:10-14 Balak is beside himself with anger, but Balaam reminds him he never promised to curse Israel. Compare v. 13 with 22:18.

24:15-19 In a visionary encounter similar to that of the third oracle, Balaam uttered predictive prophecy about the distant future of Israel. The star and scepter are symbols of a glorious and powerful kingdom that would subdue the enemies of Israel, typified as Moab and Edom. In the early Israelite monarchy, David fulfilled this prophecy by defeating and subjugating both Moab and Edom (2Sm 8:1-12). But as later Israelite kings failed to obey God’s instructions and as oppression and exile followed, this passage would be interpreted messianically to refer to a coming glorious king. The model of a just and righteous king was brought to ultimate fulfillment in Jesus’s establishment of the kingdom of God.

24:20-24 Three brief oracles about the destiny of other nations conclude the account of Balaam. Critics ascribe these texts to late authors or sources because of their brevity and language. Yet their collective theme is that God would subdue all peoples like Moab who opposed his will and his people. The people of Amalek would be subdued under Saul, Samuel, and David. The Kenites would be subdued by their neighbors, the northern Sinai tribe of Asshur (Gn 25:3,18—not the same as the later Assyrians). The Kenites were a nomadic clan from the eastern Sinai region. In Jdg 1:16 the association is made between the Kenites and Moses’s Midianite in-laws, Jethro, Reuel, and Hobab, whose descendants settled in the Negev near Arad. Later Kenites lived as far north as the territory of Naphtali. The present text notes a group of Kenites who, like some Midianites, had become enemies of Israel and would eventually be subdued. Then the Asshurite people would in turn be conquered by the Kittim, a reference to the Mediterranean peoples such as the Philistines. They too would then see their demise.

The reference to Asshur is probably not to the later Assyrian empire of the ninth to seventh centuries BC, or even the Middle Assyrian peoples of the late Bronze Age, who seldom ventured west of the Euphrates River. Most associate this citation with the relatively unknown Asshurites, a nomadic group of the Negev region, mentioned in Gn 25:3,18 and Ps 83:8. They were descendants of Abraham and his concubine Keturah. “Kittim” is one of the ancient terms for Cyprus (Gn 10:4), derived from its major city Kition (thus Kitionites). In several OT passages, the term was used generically for the islands of the Mediterranean and their inhabitants (Jr 2:10; Dn 11:30). The (Hb) kittiyim mentioned in the Arad inscriptions were probably Greek and Cypriot mercenaries serving in the Judean army in border fortresses. During the Hellenistic period “Kittim” became a byword for the archenemies of God, a prominent motif in the Qumran scrolls in reference to the Greeks and then the Romans. In the eschatological climax of history, all rebellious nations will bow to the judgment of God.

24:25 Balaam began his trek homeward, but as 31:8 suggests, he was killed in the Midianite campaign, having been instrumental in instigating the idolatrous enticement of Israelites in chap. 25.