Numbers 23:25

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹³Then Balak said to him, "Please come with me to another place where you can see them. You will only see the outskirts of their camp-not all of them. And from there, curse them for me." ¹⁴So Balak took him to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah, where he built seven altars and offered a bull and a ram on each altar. ¹⁵Balaam said to Balak, "Stay here beside your burnt offering while I meet the LORD over there." ¹⁶And the LORD met with Balaam and put a message in his mouth, saying, "Return to Balak and speak what I tell you." ¹⁷So he returned to Balak, who was standing there by his burnt offering with the princes of Moab. "What did the LORD say?" Balak asked. ¹⁸Then Balaam lifted up an oracle, saying: "Arise, O Balak, and listen; give ear to me, O son of Zippor. ¹⁹God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill? ²⁰I have indeed received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I cannot change it. ²¹He considers no disaster for Jacob; He sees no trouble for Israel. The LORD their God is with them, and the shout of the King is among them. ²²God brought them out of Egypt with strength like a wild ox.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Psalms 2:1-3

Reciprocal: 1 Chronicles 9:28 - the charge

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And Balak said unto Balaam, neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all. Signifying that it would be as well or better to do nothing at all, than to do what he did; but the sense is not, that he would not have him curse them, that he could never say, since he had pressed it both before and after this; wherefore the words should be rendered, as they are by some p, "if in cursing thou dost not curse", or will not curse, "neither in blessing bless", or, however, do not bless: if he could not or would not curse Israel, he would not have him bless them on any account; if he could do him and his people no good in ridding them of their enemies, yet he desires him by no means to do them any harm by discouraging them and encouraging Israel.

p So Fagius, Vatablus; with which agree the Arabic version, and Noldius, p. 221. No. 1024.