The Unwilling Prophet Text: Numbers 24:1-9
Introduction: God's Hijacked Mouthpiece
We live in a world that believes in the power of the autonomous human will. Modern man, and tragically many modern Christians, see God as a celestial gentleman who would never dream of imposing His will on anyone. He makes suggestions, He offers encouragement, but He would never override a person's settled intentions. This is a domesticated god, a neutered lion, and he is not the God of the Bible. The God of Scripture is absolutely sovereign, and the story of Balaam is one of the most potent and frankly terrifying demonstrations of that sovereignty in all of Scripture.
Here we have a man, Balaam, a pagan diviner for hire. He is a spiritual mercenary, a man whose loyalties are entirely for sale. King Balak of Moab has hired him for a simple task: curse the nation of Israel. Balak sees this massive horde of people on his border, and he wants them gone. He understands that battles are won not just with swords, but in the spiritual realm. So he hires the best, a man with a reputation. But Balaam has a problem. His intended curse keeps getting stuck in his throat, and a blessing comes out instead. He has tried twice, from two different locations, using all his pagan incantations, and has failed spectacularly. God has turned the curse into a blessing.
What we are about to witness is not Balaam's conversion. It is his commandeering. This is not a change of heart; it is a divine hijacking of the vocal cords. God is about to prove that His intention to bless His people is so fixed, so unalterable, that He will take the mouth of a greedy, corrupt prophet and make it a fire hose of glorious, covenantal truth. He will put His words into the mouth of a man who hates Him, and He will do it to show the enemies of His people that their every effort against the church is doomed to utter failure. God does not negotiate with the enemies of His people. He overrules them, He mocks them, and sometimes, He makes them pay to pronounce blessings on the very ones they intended to destroy.
The Text
And Balaam saw that it was good in the eyes of Yahweh to bless Israel, so he did not go as at other times to encounter omens, but he set his face toward the wilderness. And Balaam lifted up his eyes and saw Israel dwelling tribe by tribe; and the Spirit of God came upon him. Then he took up his discourse and said, “The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor, And the oracle of the man whose eye is uncovered; The oracle of him who hears the words of God, Who beholds the vision of the Almighty, Falling down, yet having his eyes opened, How fair are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel! Like valleys that stretch out, Like gardens beside the river, Like aloes planted by Yahweh, Like cedars beside the waters. Water will flow from his buckets, And his seed will be by many waters, And his king shall be lifted up higher than Agag, And his kingdom shall be exalted. God brings him out of Egypt, He is for him like the horns of the wild ox. He will devour the nations who are his adversaries, And will gnaw their bones in pieces, And shatter them with his arrows. He crouches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lion, who dares rouse him? Blessed is everyone who blesses you, And cursed is everyone who curses you.”
(Numbers 24:1-9 LSB)
Pragmatic Surrender (v. 1-2)
The third oracle begins with a shift in Balaam's methodology.
"And Balaam saw that it was good in the eyes of Yahweh to bless Israel, so he did not go as at other times to encounter omens, but he set his face toward the wilderness. And Balaam lifted up his eyes and saw Israel dwelling tribe by tribe; and the Spirit of God came upon him." (Numbers 24:1-2)
Balaam is not a fool. He is a wicked man, but he is not stupid. He finally recognizes the futility of his enterprise. He sees that Yahweh is determined to bless Israel. This is not repentance. This is the recognition of a superior force. It is the pragmatism of a man who realizes his spells and rituals are like shooting spitballs at a battleship. So, he gives up on his sorcery, his "omens." He stops trying to manipulate the spiritual world and simply "set his face toward the wilderness."
He looks directly at the object of God's blessing, the camp of Israel, arrayed "tribe by tribe." He sees their order, their sheer size, their divinely arranged community. And as he looks, something happens that is entirely outside of his control. "The Spirit of God came upon him." We must be precise here. This is not the indwelling Spirit of regeneration that makes a man a new creature. This is the Spirit of prophecy, an overwhelming, external force that comes upon an individual for a specific task. The Spirit came upon the wicked King Saul, and he prophesied (1 Sam. 19:23-24). The wicked high priest Caiaphas prophesied the necessity of Jesus' death, not because he was a believer, but because he held the office (John 11:51). The Holy Spirit is sovereign. He can use any instrument He pleases, a donkey, a pagan, a priest, to declare His unadulterated truth. Balaam is about to speak, but he is no longer the one driving.
The Seer's Vision (v. 3-4)
The Spirit-compelled oracle begins with an introduction that establishes its divine authority.
"The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor, And the oracle of the man whose eye is uncovered; The oracle of him who hears the words of God, Who beholds the vision of the Almighty, Falling down, yet having his eyes opened," (Numbers 24:3-4)
Balaam identifies himself, but under the Spirit's influence, he describes himself in a new way. He is "the man whose eye is uncovered," or opened. This is profoundly ironic. This is the same man who was so spiritually blind that his donkey could see the Angel of the Lord when he could not. Now, by an act of sheer divine power, his spiritual eyes are peeled back. He is no longer looking for omens in the dirt; he is seeing a vision from the Almighty.
He claims to hear the very "words of God." There is no intermediary. God is speaking directly through him. The posture described, "falling down, yet having his eyes opened," depicts the overwhelming nature of true prophecy. The prophet is physically prostrated by the sheer weight of the glory he is witnessing, yet his spiritual perception is perfectly sharp. He is completely overpowered by God, which is precisely the point. The words that follow are not Balaam's opinion. They are a direct, unmediated broadcast from the throne room of heaven.
A Garden in the Wilderness (v. 5-6)
The first thing the Spirit-opened eyes of Balaam see is the beauty of God's people.
"How fair are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel! Like valleys that stretch out, Like gardens beside the river, Like aloes planted by Yahweh, Like cedars beside the waters." (Genesis 24:5-6)
Where Balak sees a military threat, God sees a garden. The language is lush, verdant, and Edenic. Israel in the wilderness is pictured as a paradise, a place of life and divine cultivation. They are not a random assortment of tents, but beautiful dwellings, like sprawling valleys and riverside gardens. The imagery is specific. These are not just any plants; they are "aloes planted by Yahweh" and "cedars beside the waters." God Himself is the gardener. He personally planted and tends to His people. This is a direct repudiation of the curse Balaam was hired to speak. You cannot curse what God has planted. You cannot wither what God waters. This is how God sees His church. In the midst of a hostile world, a spiritual wilderness, He sees us as His beautiful, flourishing garden.
An Exalted Kingdom (v. 7-8)
The prophecy moves from the current beauty of the people to the future glory of their kingdom and king.
"Water will flow from his buckets, And his seed will be by many waters, And his king shall be lifted up higher than Agag, And his kingdom shall be exalted. God brings him out of Egypt, He is for him like the horns of the wild ox. He will devour the nations who are his adversaries, And will gnaw their bones in pieces, And shatter them with his arrows." (Numbers 24:7-8)
The theme of water and fruitfulness continues, signifying not just internal prosperity but external influence. "His seed will be by many waters." This is a picture of global influence. But then the prophecy sharpens its focus onto a king. This future king of Israel "shall be lifted up higher than Agag." At the time, Agag was likely a dynastic name for the kings of the Amalekites, a formidable enemy. This is a prophecy that Israel's king will be greater than the greatest of their enemies. Centuries later, Saul will fail this test when he spares Agag. This points forward to a greater King, the Messiah, who will not fail, but will utterly crush the head of the serpent. His kingdom will not just survive; it "shall be exalted."
And the source of this power? It is not Israel's ingenuity. It is God's redemptive might. "God brings him out of Egypt." Their entire history is a testimony to God's power on their behalf. He is their strength, "like the horns of the wild ox," an image of untamable, destructive power against their foes. The language is brutally martial. He will "devour the nations," "gnaw their bones," and "shatter them." The God who plants gardens is also a man of war. The security of His garden is guaranteed by His ferocity against all intruders.
The Invincible Lion (v. 9)
The oracle reaches its crescendo by invoking two of the most powerful images in Scripture: the lion of Judah and the Abrahamic covenant.
"He crouches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lion, who dares rouse him? Blessed is everyone who blesses you, And cursed is everyone who curses you." (Numbers 24:9)
This imagery deliberately echoes Jacob's prophecy over his son Judah in Genesis 49:9, identifying Israel, and particularly its future king, with the line of Judah. The lion is at rest, secure, but anyone foolish enough to provoke him does so at their own peril. This is a picture of a people secure in God's power. They are not anxious, not striving. They are resting in the strength of their divine protector. But they are not to be trifled with.
And then comes the final, devastating blow to Balak's entire project. Balaam, the hired curser, is forced to pronounce the foundational promise of the Abrahamic covenant from Genesis 12:3. "Blessed is everyone who blesses you, And cursed is everyone who curses you." This is the central rule of engagement for all of history. God has tied the destiny of the nations to how they treat His covenant people. In that moment, Balak is paying a man to tell him that by trying to curse Israel, he is bringing a curse down upon his own head. The entire mission was suicidal from the start. God's blessing on His people is an irreversible reality, and to fight against it is to declare war on God Himself.
Conclusion: The Unstoppable Blessing
This is not simply a story about ancient Israel. This is a paradigm for the Church of Jesus Christ. We are the Israel of God, the seed of Abraham by faith. And the world, the flesh, and the devil have hired their own prophets to curse us from the beginning. They use politics, media, academia, and every other tool at their disposal to pronounce curses, to demoralize, and to destroy the people of God.
But what this story thunders across the centuries is that God's purpose cannot be thwarted. Our security does not depend on our cleverness or our political maneuvering. It depends entirely on God's unilateral, sovereign, and unchangeable decision to bless us in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the King who is higher than Agag. He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and at His name every knee will bow.
The central promise remains in full force. To bless the Church is to be blessed by God. To curse the Church is to be cursed by God. All the machinations of our enemies, all their schemes and their curses, will ultimately be overruled. God will either silence them, or He will do what He did to Balaam, and He will hijack their mouths to declare His praise. Our job is not to live in fear of the world's curses, but to live as the beautiful, orderly, and fruitful garden that God has planted, trusting in the Lion who guards us while He rests.