Bible Commentaries
Numbers 22

Verses 1-41

VII

FROM KADESH-BARNEA TO MOAB

Numbers 20-22, Numbers 33:37-49; Deuteronomy 2:1-3:11

Historically Numbers 21-22 of this book will carry you to the end of the book, describing the journey from Kadesh to the Jordan. But it leaves out the great incident about Balaam which occupies several chapters. In connection with Numbers 20-22, study the following scriptures: Numbers 33:37-49 the itinerary chapter commencing at Numbers 33:37-49, Deuteronomy 2:1-3:11. In many respects those two chapters give a more intelligent statement than this section in Numbers.

The great incidents of this section are the assembling at Kadesh in the fortieth year, the death of Miriam, the sin of Moses that excluded him from the Promised Land, the fight waged on them by Arad the Canaanite, the death of Aaron at Mount Hor, the sin of the people where they were punished by fiery serpents and saved by the brazen serpent, the digging of a well at another station by the princes of Israel using their sticks, and a most beautiful spring bubbling up, a song on that water as it bubbled up recorded in the old book of the Wars of Jehovah which is referred to, and the war with Sihon and Og.

It is the fortieth year and the first month of that year that they are reassembled by divine command at Kadesh-barnea. Before I proceed with this discussion, I want us to take a backward glance at that thirty-eight years of silence. I told you that in that thirty-eight years they did not keep up the ordinance of circumcision. In the book of Joshua, as soon as they passed the river Jordan, the covenant was renewed and Joshua circumcised all of those who had not been circumcised in the wilderness. From Amos 5 and Acts 7, we learn that all that thirty-eight years they had made no sacrifices. We learn that in that time they worshiped idols. They were under the curse of God, and he did not count the time; there was total suspension of the covenant. But during that time the Levites stayed around the ark of the covenant and kept up worship. The places mentioned in Numbers 33 constitute a record of the stopping places of the ark as they moved it.

The command goes out that since the penalty is nearly paid – and we will find Just where it stops – they must reassemble at the place where they broke the covenant. Miriam, who had lived through that period of thirty-eight years dies just when she gets back to the place where she had committed her sin. She is buried and that is the end of Miriam. Those people come back there sore, although it is a new generation, and the first thing they did was to commit another sin. The water at Kadesh-barnea was not sufficient for three millions of people, and striking it at a dry time, they began to make their old complaints. Moses takes the case to God and God commands him to gather them together in a great congregation, and in their sight, with staff in hand, the staff with which he had wrought all the miracles of the past years, to speak to the rock and the water would flow out and God would begin again to supply the people. Moses was very mad. He had been a meek and patient man. He had had charge of that people and had their burden on his shoulders for thirty-nine years. The description of the sin that he committed is expressed in the following scriptures: Numbers 20:10-11; Numbers 27:14; Deuteronomy 1:37; Deuteronomy 3:26-27; Psalms 106:33.

One of the questions on Numbers will be for you to analyze the sin of Moses, and as I am not going to give you that analysis, it is very important that you remember those passages of Scripture. Now, God told Moses to speak to the rock, but, instead of speaking, Moses struck the rock. The other time God had commanded him to strike the rock, which refers, first, to the fact that Christ must be smitten to supply the needs of his people. But the next time he must not be smitten. You must speak, and by petition draw the supplies of a Christian. But Moses struck twice. He was very mad and seemed to attribute the power to himself. He did not sanctify God in this matter, but sanctified himself. The psalmist says that the sin of the people brought ill to Moses and caused him to speak unadvisedly with his lips. Just before his death, recorded in Deuteronomy, Moses says, "For your sake I was led into this sin which kept me from entering the Holy Land which you are to enter."

The next question in order of time is to turn to Numbers 21 and read three verses which tell us about the Canaanite king, Arad. This king thought that they were going to repeat their old experiment of trying to enter the Promised Land on the south, and he came out and fought them at the very place where they had been defeated before, but this time he got an awful thrashing. He was outlawed and that ban of outlawry was fulfilled in the days of Joshua.

While at Kadesh, Moses sent messengers to two nations. He wanted to get around on the Jordan River side without having to make a long circuit. There were only two ways, one through the Amorite country and the other by going through the Edom country. Moses sent a very respectful communication to the king of Edom, calling him Brother Edom, or Esau, and saying, "Your brother Jacob desires to pass through your country to get to his own land, and we will promise you to stick to the highways and not scatter about, and we will take nothing without paying your own price for it." We learn from Deuteronomy that Moses sent a similar message to Moab, the descendants of Lot, as he would have to go through the Mount Seir country first and Moab next. And he said to the Moabites, "The descendants of Abraham would say to the descendants of Lot, Let your cousins pass through your country." But as far as Edom was concerned, they assembled an army to block the way.

What follows next? Kadesh-barnea is Just south of Hebron. The children of Israel are at Kadesh and they want to get around on the Jordan side through Edom and Moab, their kinsfolk. If Moab and Edom refuse, they have to make a long circuit around. Moab and Edom did refuse and God would not permit them to force their way through by war, because they are kinspeople. So they have to move south through the Arabah, that great valley through which the Jordan doubtless used to flow. When they stopped at Mount Hor in the edge of the country, Aaron dies. The account is very piteous. In the main, he has been a remarkably good man. He has committed some sins. He joined Moses in the sin which excluded him from the Promised Land. God commands Moses to take Aaron up on that bare mountain and to take his sons with him. They strip off the priestly robes and put them on Eleazar, who is to become high priest. And there Aaron dies. I have often thought about that lonely grave. There is a tradition about that mountain now. Almost any guide will volunteer to take you to Aaron’s grave when you go there now.

Then they left Mount Hor and made a day’s march or two to a place called Zaimona, going right down that dry Arabah. The people complained again, and God’s punishment was to send fiery serpents among them. Once a little boy asked me to tell him a story about snakes. And I said, "Once upon a time there was a great camp of three million people in their tents in a dry valley, and they sinned against God, and in the night from every direction over the desert came snakes, great snakes with red splotches on them and much more deadly than rattlesnakes. And in the night whoever moved was bitten by the snakes. The children were crying out all night that they had been bitten by snakes, and the people died and kept dying, and the snakes kept biting, until finally God told the leader of that camp that if he would put brass into a furnace and mold a big snake and put it on a pole, that everybody who looked at it would be healed, and as the sun shone on that brazen serpent, it made it so very conspicuous that it could be seen all over that camp. A mother would hear about that brazen serpent and would say to her dying boy, all twisted with agony and pain, ’O son, I will turn you over so you can see. Now just look yonder at that brazen serpent,’ and he would shut his eyes and say, ‘I will not look,’ and then die. They would come to where a man was bitten, and find him cursing and swearing. They would all gather around him and his wife would say to him, ’O husband, here are your brothers and sisters and your friends and one of your children. They have all been bitten and they looked and lived. Will you not look and live too?’ But he shuts his eyes and dies. ’But it came to pass whosoever looked was healed.’ " And the little fellow was so well pleased with the story that he asked where I had read it and I told him in the Bible, the very last place he expected to find a good story.

Now, there was a converted Jew, Joseph Frey, who became a great expounder of the Old Testament types of Christ. He took this text in John, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life." Preachers should all get Joseph Frey’s Old Testament Types. Fairbairn has a book on "Typology" but not so good a book as Frey’s.

I am going to call your attention to a thought that you will find nowhere else in the world. You remember that scapegoat on the great day of atonement that was to be given to Azazel and to pass under the power of the evil spirit. So Jesus on the cross passed under the power of the evil spirit. Now, that type is here. This serpent represents Jesus lifted up on the cross and though the serpent bit him, he crushed the serpent’s head.

When they get to Amah, Numbers 21:13, here you find the reference to that old book. "The Wars of Jehovah." "From thence they Journeyed to Beer." That is a very dry place. When God told Moses to supply the people with water, the princes digged in the ground with their staves and a fresh spring bubbled out. They come up now even with the mouth of the Jordan. Moses stands on the top of Mount Nebo and looks over the Promised Land.

Moses sent a messenger to the Amorites and they despised the messenger and prepared for war. But they are conquered and their country taken. Then they come to Bashan. Deuteronomy tells us how big Og, the king of the country, was. Counting a cubit as a foot and a half, his iron bedstead was thirteen and a half feet long, and I could easily lie down upon it full-length crosswise.

That finishes this section. What is left of the book is to pick up some incidents that occurred, particularly the incident of Balaam.

QUESTIONS

1. The period of wandering – How long, their relation to the covenant, their worship, the Levites, God’s mercies to them during this period and why?

2. When did they assemble back at Kadesh-barnea?

3. What noted person dies here?

4. What sin was committed here by the new generation and God’s provision for their need?

5. Collate the scriptures on the sin of Moses and give the character of his sin.

6. Give account of the attack on Israel by the Canaanites; their doom

7. What effort did Moses make to go a direct route to the Jordan?

8. Trace their journey from Kadesh-barnea to Mount Hor. What noted person dies here, and who takes his place?

9. What is Israel’s next sin? The punishment? What New Testament reference to the Brazen Serpent? In what particular is the Brazen Serpent a type of Christ?

10. What books commended on Old Testament types?

11. What lost book is here quoted from?

12. Recite the incident of the Well and the Song.

13. Give an account of the fall of Sihon and another song.

14. Give an account of the fall of Bashan.

Verses 1-25

VIII

BALAAM: HIS IMPORTANT PROPHECIES, HIS CHARACTER, AND HIS BIBLE HISTORY

Numbers 22-24; Numbers 31:8; Numbers 31:16; Deuteronomy 23:4-5; Joshua 13:22; Joshua 24:9-10; Micah 6:5; Nehemiah 13:2; Judges 1:2; 2 Peter 2:15; Revelation 2:14

These scriptures give you a clue to both Balaam’s history and character: Numbers 22-24; Numbers 31:8, and especially Numbers 31:16; Deuteronomy 23:4-5; Joshua 13:22; Joshua 24:9-10; Micah 6:5; Nehemiah 13:2; Judges 1:2; 2 Peter 2:15; and, most important of all, Revelation 2:14. Anybody who attempts to discuss Balaam ought to be familiar with every one of these scriptures.

Who was Balaam? He was a descendant of Abraham, as much as the Israelites were. He was a Midianite and his home was near where the kinsmen of Abraham, Nahor and Laban, lived. They possessed from the days of Abraham a very considerable knowledge of the true God. He was not only a descendant of Abraham and possessed the knowledge of the true God through traditions handed down, as in the case of Job and Melchizedek, but he was a prophet of Jehovah. That is confirmed over and over again. Unfortunately he was also a soothsayer and a diviner, adding that himself to his prophetic office for the purpose of making money. People always approach soothsayers with fees.

His knowledge of the movements of the children of Israel could easily have been obtained and the book of Exodus expressly tells that that knowledge was diffused over the whole country. Such a poem as Jacob’s dying blessing on his children would circulate all over the Semitic tribes, and such an administration as that of Joseph would become known over all the whole world, such displays of power as the miracles in Egypt, the deliverance at the Red Sea and the giving of the law right contiguous to the territory of Balaam’s nation make it possible for him to learn all these mighty particulars. It is a great mistake to say that God held communication only with the descendants of Abraham. We see how he influenced people in Job’s time and how he influenced Melchizedek, and there is one remarkable declaration made in one of the prophets that I have not time to discuss, though I expect to preach a sermon on it some day, in which God claims that he not only brought Israel out of Egypt but the Philistines out of Caphtor and all peoples from the places they occupied (Amos 9:7). We are apt to get a very narrow view of God’s government of the human race when we attempt to confine it to the Jews only.

Next, we want to consider the sin of Balaam. First, it was from start to finish a sin against knowledge. He had great knowledge of Jehovah. It was a sin against revelation and a very vile sin in that it proceeded from his greed for money, loving the wages of unrighteousness. His sin reached its climax after he had failed to move Jehovah by divinations, and it was clear that Jehovah was determined to bless these people, when for a price paid in his hand be vilely suggested a means by which the people could be turned from God and brought to punishment. That was about as iniquitous a thing as the purchase of the ballots in the late prohibition election in Waco, for the wages of unrighteousness. His counsel was (Numbers 31:16) to seduce the people of Israel by bringing the Moabitish and Midianite evil women to tempt and get them through their lusts to attend idolatrous feasts.

In getting at the character of this man, we have fortunately some exceedingly valuable sermon literature. The greatest preachers of modern times have preached on Balaam, and in the cross lights of their sermons every young preacher ought to inform himself thoroughly on Balaam. The most famous one for quite a while was Bishop Butler’s sermon. When I was a boy, everybody read that sermon, and, as I recall it, the object was to show the self-deception which persuaded Balaam in every case that the sin he committed could be brought within the rules of conscience and revelation, so that he could say something at every point to show that he stood right, while all the time he was going wrong.

Then the great sermon by Cardinal Newman: "The dark shadow cast over a noble course by standing always on the ladder of advancement and by the suspense of a worldly ambition never satisfied." He saw in Balaam one of the most remarkable men of the world, high up on the ladder and the way to the top perfectly open but shaded by the dark shadow of his sin. Then Dr. Arnold’s sermon on Balaam, as I recall, the substance being the strange combination of the purest form of religious belief with action immeasurably below it. Next the great sermon by Spurgeon with seven texts. He takes the words in the Bible, "I have sinned," and Balaam is one of the seven men he discusses. Spurgeon preached Balaam as a double-minded man. He could see the right and yet his lower nature turned him constantly away from it, a struggle between the lower and higher nature. These four men were the greatest preachers in the world since Paul. I may modestly call attention to my own sermon on Balaam; that Balaam was not a double-minded man; that from the beginning this man had but one real mind, and that was greed and power, and he simply used the religious light as a stalking horse. No rebuff could stop him long. God might say, "You shall not go," and he would say, "Lord, hear me again and let me go." He might start and an angel would meet him and he might hear the rebuke of the dumb brute but he would still seek a way to bring about evil. I never saw a man with a mind more single than Balaam.

I want you to read about him in Keble’s "Christian Year." Keble conceives of Balaam as standing on the top of a mountain that looked over all those countries he is going to prophesy about and used this language:

O for a sculptor’s hand,

That thou might’st take thy stand

Thy wild hair floating in the eastern breeze,

Thy tranc’d yet open gaze

Fix’d on the desert haze,

As one who deep in heaven some airy pageant aeea.

In outline dim and vast

Their fearful shadows cast

The giant forms of empires on their way

To ruin: one by one

They tower and they are gone,

Yet in the Prophet’s soul the dreams of avarice stay.

That is a grand conception. If he just had the marble image of a man of that kind, before whose eyes, from his lofty mountain pedestal were sweeping the pageants of mighty empires and yet in whose eyes always stayed the dreams of avarice. The following has been sculptured on a rock:

No sun or star so bright

In all the world of light

That they should draw to Heaven his downward eye:

He hears th’ Almighty’s word,

He sees the Angel’s sword,

Yet low upon the earth his heart and treasure lie.

That comes nearer giving a true picture of Balaam. That shows you a man so earth bound in his heart’s desire, looking at low things and grovelling that no sun or star could lift his eye toward heaven. Not even God Almighty’s word could make him look up, without coercion of the human will.

Now, you are to understand that the first two prophecies of Balaam came to him when he was trying to work divinations on God. In those two he obeys as mechanically as a hypnotized person obeys the will of the hypnotist. He simply speaks under the coercive power of God. In these first two prophecies God tells him what to say, as if a mightier hand than his had dipped the pen in ink and moved his hand to write those lines.

At the end of the second one when he saw no divination could possibly avail against those people, the other prophecies came from the fact that the Spirit of the Lord comes on him just like the Spirit came on Saul, the king of Israel, and he prophesied as a really inspired man. In the first prophecy he shows, first, a people that God has blessed and will not curse; second, he is made to say, "Let me die the death of the righteous and let my, last end – at death and judgment – be like his." That shows God’s revelation to that people. The second prophecy shows why that is so: "God is not a man that he should repent." "It is not worth while to work any divination. He has marked out the future of this nation." Second, why is it that he will not regard iniquity in Jacob? For the purpose he has in view he will not impute their trespasses to them. The prophecy stops with this thought, that when you look at what this people have done and will do, you are not to say, "What Moses did, nor Joshua did, nor David," but you are to say, "What God hath wrought!"

The first time I ever heard Dr. Burleson address young preachers, and I was not even a Christian myself, he took that for his text. He commenced by saying, "That is a great theme for a preacher. Evidently these Jews had not accomplished all those things. They were continually rebelling and wanting to go back, and yet you see them come out of Egypt, cross the Sea, come to Sinai, organized, fed, clothed, the sun kept off by day and darkness by night, marvellous victories accomplished and you are to say, ’What God hath wrought!’ "

When the spiritual power comes on him he begins to look beyond anything he has ever done yet, to messianic days. There are few prophecies in the Bible more far-reaching than this last prophecy of Balaam. When he says of the Messiah, "I shall see him but not now," it is a long way off. "My case is gone, but verily a star" – the symbol of the star and sceptre carried out the thought of the power of the Messiah. So much did that prophecy impress the world that those Wise Men who came right from Balaam’s country when Jesus was born, remember this prophecy: "We have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him."

He then looks all around and there are the nations before him from that mountain top, and he prophesies about Moab and Amalek and passes on beyond, approaching even to look to nations yet unborn. He looks to the Grecian Empire arising far away in the future, further than anybody but Daniel. He sees the ships of the Grecians coming and the destruction of Asshur and the destruction of Eber, his own people. Then we come to the antitypical references later.

If you want a comparison of this man, take Simon Magus who wanted to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit so as to make money. That is even better than Judas, though Judas comes in. Judas had knowledge, was inspired, worked miracles, and yet Judas never saw the true kingdom of God in the spirit of holiness, and because he could not bring about the kingdom of which he would be treasurer for fifteen dollars he sold the Lord Jesus Christ. Those are the principal thoughts I wanted to add.

QUESTIONS

1. Who was Balaam?

2. How did he obtain his knowledge of God?

3. What was the sin of Balaam?

4. What was the climax of his sin?

5. What five sermons on Balaam are referred to? Give the line of thought in each.

6. Give Keble’s conception of Balaam.

7. What was the testimony sculptured on a rock?

8. Now give your own estimate of the character of Balaam.

9. How do you account for the first two prophecies?

10. How do you account for the other two?

11. In the first prophecy what does he show, what is he made to say and what does that show?

12. Give a brief analysis of the second prophecy.

13. Of what does the third prophecy consist?

14. Give the items of the fourth prophecy.

15. How did his messianic prophecy impress the world?

16. When was this prophecy concerning Amalek fulfilled? Ana. In the days of Saul. (I Sam. 15).

17. Who was Asshur and what was his relation to the Kenites?

18. What reference here to the Grecians?

19. Who was Eber?

20. With what two New Testament characters may we compare?