And he took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, [saying], Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel.
Ver. 7. And he took up his parable.] Or, Pithy and powerful speech, uttered in numerous and sententious terms, and taken among the heathen for prophecies or oracles: poemata pro vaticiniis, &c. Poets were taken for prophets, Tit 1:12 and poems for prophecies. Hence their στοιχομαντεια, wherein opening a book of Homer, Hesiod, &c., they took upon them, by the first verse they lighted upon, to divine. Tragedians also, for their parables, or master sentences, were highly esteemed of old, insomuch as, after the discomfit of the Athenians in Sicily, they were relieved who could repeat somewhat of Euripides.
Out of Aram.] Aram Naharim, or Mesopotamia, so called, because it is situated between those two rivers of Paradise, Tigris and Euphrates. This was Abraham's country, where, while he was in it, he "served strange gods." Jos 24:2