Numbers 22:8 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

This night The night was the time when God used to reveal his mind by dreams. As the Lord shall speak unto me Hebrew, Jehovah, the true God. Though he was mercenary and addicted to superstitious rites, he might still have some revelations from the true God, even as Laban had, though he used teraphim, or idol gods, Genesis 36:24-30. Thus, though termed a soothsayer, he here acknowledges the true God, by his incommunicable name Jehovah, and yet with that profession he both loved the wages of unrighteousness, 2 Peter 2:15, and joined in offering sacrifices on the high places of Baal, Numbers 22:41, and Numbers 23:2. Some think that he mentioned Jehovah either for his own greater reputation, as if he consulted not with inferior spirits, but with the Supreme God; or rather, because Jehovah was Israel's God, and the only possible way of ruining them was by engaging their God against them. Thus the Romans and other heathens, when they went to besiege any city, used enchantments, to call forth that god under whose peculiar protection it was supposed to be.

Numbers 22:8

8 And he said unto them, Lodge here this night, and I will bring you word again, as the LORD shall speak unto me: and the princes of Moab abode with Balaam.