Numbers 11:25 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Rested on them Not only moved them for a time, but took up his settled abode with them, because the use and end of this gift were perpetual. They prophesied Discoursed of the word and works of God in a marvellous manner, as the prophets did. So this word is used, 1 Samuel 10:5-6; Joel 2:28; 1 Corinthians 14:3. Yet were they not hereby constituted teachers, but civil magistrates, who, together with the spirit of government, received also the spirit of prophecy, as a sign and seal, both to themselves and to the people, that God had called them to that employment. They did not cease Either for that day, continuing in that exercise all that day, and, it may be, all the night too, as it is said of Saul, 1 Samuel 19:24; or, afterward also. For this was a continued gift, conferred upon them to enable them the better to discharge their magistracy; which was more expedient for them than for the rulers of other people, because the Jews were under a theocracy, or the government of God, and even their civil controversies were decided out of that word of God which the prophets expounded.