He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God [is] with him, and the shout of a king [is] among them.
Ver. 21. He hath not beheld iniquity.] Of this place of Scripture we may say as we did of another, This verse had been easy, had not commentators made it so knotty. The sense I like best is, that at this time, when Balak hired Balaam, there was no peccatum flagrans, no foul sin of that people, flaming in the eyes of God, or stinking in his nostrils; and therefore there could be no enchantment against them. Num 23:23 Whence that devilish counsel of his to Balak, to set fair women afore them, to entice them to adultery and idolatry, and so to put them under God's displeasure. But what strange inferences are those from this text, that God sees no sin in his elect, that the very being of their sins is abolished out of his sight; that God is never displeased with his people, though they fall into adultery or the like sin, no not with a fatherly displeasure! &c.