Nevertheless the Kenite shall be wasted, until Asshur shall carry thee away captive.
Nevertheless the Kenite shall be wasted. The primary meaning of the verb х baa`ar (H1197)] is to eat up, to consume; and Gesenius ('Lex.,' sub voce) assigns it various significations in the Piel conj., No. 2, to cause to burn, to consume; and No. 3, to take away, to remove, to destroy. In either of these acceptations he considers the word may be taken in this clause; because he renders it, 'the Kenites shall be driven out, destroyed.' Hengstenberg takes it in both of these senses, applying it to the Canaanite tribes generally, which were represented by the Kenites-the first of those tribes whose hostility was displayed against Israel (Numbers 14:25; Numbers 14:43; Numbers 14:45), and whose destruction or expulsion from Canaan the latter were the agents of Providence in accomplishing-at first by the war of invasion under Joshua, and gradually during their subsequent occupation of the land.
Until Asshur shall carry thee away captive. The party addressed Hengstenberg considers, with Calvin, to be Israel, and supports this opinion on these two grounds:
(1) Because it seems an exceedingly harsh and forced construction for the Kenite to be, in the beginning of the sentence, spoken of in the third person, and at the close abruptly addressed in the second; and,
(2) Because to exhibit the prosperity and ascendant influence of Israel was the main object of Balaam's prophecies; and it seems to have been the purpose of the inspiring Spirit to show, by an incidental mention of a great calamity, that this prosperity would not be pure and uninterrupted;
(3) Because it is in accordance with the style of these prophecies for Balaam to address Israel directly (cf. Numbers 24:5; Numbers 24:9, last clause).
Kurtz opposes the views of Hengstenberg respecting the national existence of the Kenites:
(1) Because their name does not occur in the genealogical table of nations in the age of Moses; and,
(2) Also because they are not mentioned in any list of the population whom the Israelites destroyed.
He infers, therefore, that although they had for a time the name and locality of a separate tribe in Canaan, they had gradually sunk, until they had lost their independence; and as Jethro, who was a Kenite (Judges 1:16), is called a Midianite (Numbers 10:29), and "priest of Midian" (Exodus 3:1), the Kenites had become incorporated with the larger tribe of the Midianites, and the people were called indifferently by the one name or the other. The reason why the name Kenite is preferred in this passage is on account of the play upon the words already referred to.
But that the Midianites were really the people whose doom, under that appellation, was denounced, is, in the opinion of Kurtz, placed beyond a doubt by the fact, that from their league with Moab in hiring Balaam (Numbers 22:7), and their diabolical scheme of seduction (Numbers 25:1-18), they were prominent among the enemies of Israel on whom the arm of retributive justice should fall. "The Kenite shall be wasted" is literally, 'the Kenite shall be for a burning' - i:e., as Kurtz interprets the passage, 'the home of the Kenites (Midianites) shall be destroyed, but they themselves shall be carried away captive.
It is true, there is no historical account of the Midianites being carried away captive by Asshur; but they are only mentioned once subsequently to their overthrow by Gideon (Isaiah 60:6). There is no improbability, therefore, in the supposition that they were carried into captivity by the Assyrians. This interpretation we adopt as the correct one, both because Balaam was divinely constrained to bless Israel, not to curse him (as an allusion to the Babylonian captivity would have been), and because, although in the three previous prophecies Balaam dealt exclusively in eulogies upon Israel, this fourth prediction was uttered with the express design to 'advertise Balak what this people would do to his people in the latter days!'
Sir H. Rawlinson supports this view; but he proposes a new reading, which, though merely conjectural, we subjoin. х 'Eeytaan (H386), usually rendered firmness, strength (Genesis 49:24), or perpetuity (Exodus 14:27), he takes as a proper name-`Ethan, or Yatnan,' a maritime city south of Phoenicia, which formed the extreme limit of the Assyrian territory toward Egypt, the Rhinocolura of the Greeks; and the whole passage, viewed in this light, will read thus; 'Thy dwelling is Ethan (Yatnan), and thou puttest thy nest in Sela (Petra);' for the transportation of the Kenites to Assyria from this quarter, which is foretold in the next verse, is duly related in the inscriptions.]