And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam,.... This was a very extraordinary and miraculous affair, and effected by a supernatural power, that a dumb creature, which had not organs endued with speech, should speak so plainly and distinctly, as is after expressed; and yet it should not be thought incredible, for what is it that Omnipotence cannot do? wherefore there is no need to say, as some Jewish writers i, that this was all done in a visionary way, and not really and literally performed; nor can Heathens well object to the verity of it, if they believe what they themselves report concerning one of the asses which carried Bacchus over a river, to which, for reward, he gave the power of speaking with an human voice k; though it is very probable the fable was framed from this story, and frequently do their writers speak of other brute creatures endued with speech; so Homer l represents Xanthus, the horse of Achilles, having the faculty of speech given it by Juno: Pliny says m, it is commonly reported among the wonderful things of the ancients, that an ox spoke; and Livy n frequently makes mention of an ox spoke speaking in divers places, and of one particularly that said,
"Rome, take heed to thyself;''
not to take notice of a lamb in Egypt in the times of Bocchoris that spoke, related by Aelianus o and others; nor of the ram of Phrixus, or the dog at Ariminum, and the elephant of Porus in India, with others Bochart p has collected together: the words spoken by the ass were as follow:
what have l done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? and just so many times she had been smitten by him,
i Maimon. Moreh Nevochim, par. 2. c. 42. Ben Gersom in loc. k Hygin. Poet. Astronomic. l. 2. c. 23. "Lactant, de falsa Relig". l. 1. c. 21. l Iliad. 19. "prope finem". m Nat. Hist. l. 8. c. 45. n Hist. l. 24. c. 10. l. 27. c. 11. l. 28. c. 11. and l. 35. c. 21. o De Animal. l. 12. c. 3. p Hierozoic. par. 1. l. 2. c. 14. col. 197, 198.