I. Balaam is a heathen prophet; he is certainly not produced as a favourable specimen of one. In the New Testament he is represented as the very type of false and evil teachers. Yet the teaching of Balaam is not ascribed to an evil spirit, but to God; he is not treated as a mere pretender to powers which were not his; his knowledge and foresight are acknowledged as real.
II. How then was Balaam a false prophet? His predictions were confirmed; what he spoke of the goodly tents of Israel was fulfilled more perfectly than he dreamed; the star which he saw in his vision did actually arise and shine upon Gentiles as well as Hebrews. That test of truth the prophet Balaam could well endure. But a man may be false though all his words are true, though he has gifts and endowments of the highest order, though these gifts and endowments proceed, as all proceed, from God.
III. You will not find that Isaiah is true and Balaam false because the one received communications from God and the other did not, nor because Isaiah belonged to the covenant people and Balaam did not. But you will find that Isaiah lived for his people, and not for himself; that he did not value himself upon his gifts, or upon his holiness, or upon anything whatsoever that belonged to him as an individual. The certainty, under every possible discouragement and conflict, that the righteous God would prevail over all that was unrighteous in the universe, the willingness to be made an instrument in carrying out God's purposes, let what would come of him or his character this is the sign of the true prophet; this is what separates him from the solitary self-seeker, who shrank from the thought of God appearing to set the world right, who only wished when his wishes were purest that he might die the death of the righteous.
F. D. Maurice, Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament,p. 221.
References: Numbers 23:19. C. Kingsley, The Gospel of the Pentateuch,p. 172; H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2640.