Numbers 23:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Stand by thy burnt-offering— By which he means not any particular offering, but the whole sacrifice offered on the seven altars. And I will go, says Balaam, i.e. I will retire into solitude and silence to meet the Lord, Numbers 23:15. (see the note on chap. Numbers 24:1.) peradventure the Lord will come to meet me: from which it is inferred, that it was customary in those early times for prophets and other pious persons, after performing the sacred rites, to retire into some solitary place to wait for an answer from God. And therefore Balaam speaks of God's meeting with him, or communicating his mind to him, as a thing which might now probably happen to him, as it seems to have been done upon other occasions. Accordingly, he went into an high place; but as he was in a high place already, some are for rendering it, he went into a valley, or, as our margin renders it, he went solitary, i.e. into the most retired part of the grove, which those high places were seldom without, and where he expected to receive the oracle from God; but the original word שׁפי shephi, signifies a high craggy, place: see Isaiah 13:2. Jeremiah 3:2 and it is most probable that Balaam ascended into a higher part of these mountains, for the greater solemnity of his meeting with Jehovah. Mr. Le Clerc founds a conjecture upon this passage, peradventure the Lord, &c. that the angels appeared sometimes to those who offered sacrifices, and that such apparitions gave occasion to the famous doctrine of the heathens, of the evocation of the deities; which Jamblichus has thoroughly treated of in his book on the Mysteries of the Egyptians. Our readers may meet with an extract from that book, in the treatise of father Mourgues, intitled, A Theological Plan of Pythagorism. This celebrated Jesuit has there fully discussed all the questions concerning this pretended evocation of the gods. See Saurin, Dissert. 64.