1. he did not go as on the times before to encounter omens. This constitutes new information about Balaam’s two previous oracles. In each instance, as we now understand, he made his way along the promontory, in accordance with his usual professional procedures as seer and hexer or blesser, looking for signs (bird flight, cloud formations, or whatever) that would give him a clue about what to say. In each case, God intervened and “put a word in his mouth.” Balaam’s persistence in his seer’s craft throws retrospective light on his intentions toward Israel during his journey from the east when he was stymied three times by his ass as she was confronted by the divine messenger. Now, in keeping with the folktale pattern of three repetitions with a climactic switch in the third occurrence, Balaam abandons his quest for omens, instead looking out straightaway to the wilderness where Israel is encamped.

2. and the spirit of God was upon him. In this altered third instance, God does not put a word in Balaam’s mouth but sets His spirit upon him—the formula to designate inspiration used for the prophets (and the judges). With this spirit, he will now pronounce his most comprehensive blessing of Israel.

3. Utterance of Balaam. Although this line and the next (verse 4) sound very much like the set self-introduction of a professional seer who feels he can lay claim to special visionary powers, there was no equivalent at the beginning of the previous oracles, and so the declaration may be motivated in narrative context by God’s spirit having come upon Balaam.

4. El’s . . . / Shaddai. Elsewhere, El Shaddai is a compound name used for the God of Israel. As elsewhere in Balaam’s oracles, these designations, as well as Elyon in verse 16, appear to be names once used for Canaanite deities (and hence neatly appropriate in the speech of this non-Israelite prophet) that have been co-opted for monotheistic usage.

prostrate with eyes unveiled. The unveiled eyes hark back to the unveiling of Balaam’s eyes by the LORD’s messenger. A certain irony is generated by the link between the two texts: Balaam’s declaration here of his visionary power comes to remind us of his blindness when he was incapable of seeing what his ass plainly saw, until the LORD’s messenger intervened. “Prostrate” (literally, “falling,” nofel) most likely refers to the state of ecstasy in which the seer is flung to the ground. There are abundant indications elsewhere in the Bible that this sort of “falling” was expected as a consequence of the descent of the spirit on the seer or prophet.

6. Like palm groves. The Hebrew neḥalim, most scholars agree, is a homonym for the much more common term that means “wadis” or “brooks.” But the poet’s decision to use this unusual word here, as the Israeli scholar Shlomo Morag has plausibly suggested, is motivated by a desire to reinforce through the pun on palm groves/brooks the imagery of abundant water in the next several versets. There is also a near pun in these lines between the verb nitayu, “stretch out,” and nataʿ, “planted.”

7. his root. The noun zeraʿ, which ordinarily means “seed,” frequently designates “root” in poetry (repeatedly, in Job).

Agag. King of Amalek at the time of Saul.

8. their bones . . . / his loins. The switch from a plural to a singular object of the verb is characteristic of the fluid Hebrew usage in this regard.

and smashes his loins. The Masoretic Text reads “and smashes his arrows,” weḥitsaw yimḥats. A compelling emendation adopted by many scholars corrects this to weḥalatsaw yimḥats (the addition of a single consonant to the noun in question). This not only yields a much more intelligible parallelism but also reflects other lines of biblical poetry in which “loins,” ḥalatsayim, is the direct object of “smash,” maḥats.

10. clapped his palms. In the biblical world, this is a conventional gesture of despair.

11. honor. As before, “honor” refers to material reward. Balaam, having been promised vast quantities of silver and gold, will now go home empty-handed.

12. Did I not speak to your messengers. Following the established convention of biblical narrative, Balaam does not simply summarize what he said to the messengers but actually quotes his earlier speech verbatim. The only substitution, “a good thing or a bad one” instead of “a small thing or a great one,” is merely a synonymous variation, since both expressions have the sense of “anything at all.” This time, Balaam also adds “from my heart” by way of explanation.

13. That which the LORD speaks to me, it alone can I speak. This already repeated sentence, recurring now just before Balaam pronounces his final oracles, has the force of a thematic refrain: the whole point of the story is that there is no autonomous realm of word magic and vision that a technician of the holy can manipulate; all blessings and curses are dictated by the LORD.

14. people. Balaam pointedly repeats this word three times, laying before Balak a triangle of peoples: Moab, Israel, and his own people to the east, to whom he will return once he has told Balak what Israel will do to Moab.

16. and knows what Elyon knows. The extravagance of this whole self-advertisement, and especially of this clause, has a certain irony, given the previously unseeing Balaam’s absolute dependence on God for everything he manages to see and for everything he says.

17. I see him . . . / I gaze on him. Once more, as Balaam launches on his final series of pronouncements, the thematic words of sight are highlighted.

A star steps forth. The meaning of this phrase has defied interpreters. The Septuagint’s reading of zaraḥ, “shines,” instead of the Masoretic darakh, “steps forth” or “trods,” is a transparent instance of evading a textual difficulty by substituting a simpler term. Some modern interpreters, arguing from a Semitic cognate, claim that darakh here means “rules,” but that seems far-fetched because every other biblical instance has to do with treading or walking (or tightening a bow with pressure from a foot). It seems most sensible to imagine the star marching forth in military fashion or emerging from Jacob. The star is in all likelihood a metaphor for a king, something that Bar Kochba’s followers assumed in using this verse as a rationale for his messianic name, which means “son of a star.”

and the pate. The Masoretic Text here reads weqarqar, an infinitive form that might, only conjecturally, mean “and to raze.” This translation embraces the widely accepted emendation of weqodqod, “and the pate,” a neat parallel to “brow” and an apt object of the double-duty verb in the first verset, “smashes.” (The ancient Hebrew graphemes for d and r are very similar.) The identity of the Sethites is uncertain and obscurities will grow as Balaam moves on to his oracles about the nations.

19. and Jacob holds sway over them. Instead of the Masoretic “and he holds sway from Jacob,” weyerd miyaʿaqov, this translation reads weyirdem yaʿaqov, moving the mem from the beginning of the noun to the end of the verb that precedes it.

22. Cain will be for burning, / how long will Asshur hold you captive? The language of the second verset is especially crabbed and the meaning in doubt. There is also another way to construe the first verset. The verb baʿer can indicate either burning or grazing by cattle. Baruch Levine, adopting the second meaning, renders this as “Cain will be a trampled land.”

23–24. who can live more than El has set him, / and ships from the hands of the Kittites. An honest translator must admit that the Hebrew text here is not intelligible, and that the nexus between the seemingly philosophical pronouncement of the first verset and the invocation of a Mediterranean fleet in the second verset is obscure. Some scholars have sought to recover the original meaning by performing radical surgery on the text.

24. they lay low Asshur. What one can glean from these last vatic words of Balaam is a vista of destruction in which once great kingdoms sink into oblivion while the people of Israel powerfully persists.

25. And Balaam rose and went and returned to his place. This is a recurrent formula for marking the end of a narrative unit in the Bible. It should be noted that through much of the story, it was Balaam who was the subject of the verb “to go.” Now he is seen, according to the set formula, returning to his place, resuming a condition of stasis outside the boundaries of what can be narrated, while Balak goes on his way, not toward any indicated destination or mission, as was the case with Balaam, but in the frustration of all his intentions.