Homilies on Numbers 15.1–16.3

Although the order of the readings that are read requires us rather to speak of what the reader expounded, yet since some of the brothers ask that what is written about Balaam's prophecy be brought into the discourse instead, I thought it fair to satisfy not so much the order of the readings as the desires of the hearers. First of all, then, let us ask about Balaam himself, why in the Scriptures he is set down now as blameworthy, now as praiseworthy. For he is blameworthy when, forbidden by God to come to the king, he persists in coming, and, greedy for reward, consults again and asks God again, until he is left to his desires and goes in his own wills. He is culpable when he builds altars and places victims on them for demons, and with magic apparatus seeks divine oracles. He is culpable when he gives the most wicked counsel, that the people be deceived through the Midianite women and the worship of idols. Again he is shown praiseworthy when the word of God is put in his mouth, when the Spirit of God comes upon him, when he prophesies about Christ, when he declares to Jews and Gentiles the future mysteries of Christ's coming, when instead of curses he bestows blessings on the people and exalts the name of Israel above visible glory with mystical words. Since, then, the divine Scripture indicates such diverse and varied things about him, it seems to me very difficult to determine definitively a character for him that would fit not only this diversity, but to which there could also be applied what he himself says of himself as if prophesying: “Let my soul die among the souls of the righteous, and let my seed be like the seed of the righteous.” And through the prophet Micah too the Lord bears such testimony of him, where he says: “My people, what have I done to you? Answer me. For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and freed you from the house of slavery, and sent before your face Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. My people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised against you, and what Balaam son of Beor answered him, from the reeds to Gilgal, that the righteousness of the Lord might be known.” He shows, then, by these words that it was so that the righteousness of the Lord might be known that Balaam son of Beor gave King Balak all those answers which are related as written in the books. And who, do you think, will be found able to show from Balaam's very answers that the righteousness of God is manifested in them? For truly, if the word of God was put in his mouth, and the Spirit of God came upon him, and the righteousness of God is recognized and manifested from his answers, then everything he says must certainly be believed to be nothing but prophetic and divine. And yet we seldom read it written anywhere that the Spirit of God came upon any of the prophets; rather, we read of a vision which one saw, or the taking up of the word of the Lord, or that the word of God came to this one or that, and certain other things about the prophets. But that the Spirit of God came upon any of the prophets I do not for the present recall having read, except that I remember it is written thus of David: “And the Spirit of God shone upon David from that day and thereafter”; yet it does not say that the Spirit of God came upon David. Of Saul, however, I remember it is written thus: “And the Spirit of the Lord will fall upon you, and you will prophesy with them, and you will be turned into another man.” And again it is said of him: “And the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord stupefied him.” And again: “And it happened, when the evil spirit was upon Saul, that David took the psaltery and played with his hands and struck it, and it was well with him, and the evil spirit departed from him.” These things are said because what is written, “And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him,” can seem to be something intermediate. For this reason we too, according to what we had thought in the previous treatment, shall try now also to explain this same Balaam in the role of the Pharisees and scribes and those like them. But come now, let us look at the words of his prophecy, which he is written to have spoken “taking up his parable.” “From Mesopotamia,” he says, “Balak king of Moab called me, from the mountains of the east.” He calls Mesopotamia the land that lies between the rivers of Babylon, of which it is written: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion.” If anyone, then, is between these rivers of Babylon, if anyone is flooded by the streams of lust and washed round by the surges of luxury, he is said not to stand but to sit; and therefore those who were caught there said: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion.” But they cannot even weep until they have remembered Zion. For the remembrance of good things makes the causes of evils lamentable. For unless one remembers Zion, unless he looks to the law of God and the mountains of the Scriptures, he does not begin to weep for his evils. From these rivers, then, Balaam is called, and from these mountains of the east he is invited. These mountains are not those holy mountains of which it is written: “Its foundations are on the holy mountains.” And again: “Jerusalem, which is built as a city, whose sharing is together. Mountains are round about it, and the Lord is round about his people.” The mountains of Mesopotamia, then, are not such, but are those of which it is said, “dark mountains,” and again of which it is said, “Behold, I am against you, O corrupt mountain.” These are the mountains on which is every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. From these mountains, then, this Balaam is summoned. And such as these mountains are, such an east they have too. For he too, who transforms himself like an angel of light, has the rising of his light. He has that light of which it is written: “The light of the ungodly will be put out.” And just as this light of the ungodly, and that which transforms itself like an angel of light, is contrary to that light which said, “I am the light of the world,” so too this east is contrary to that East of which it is written in Zechariah: “Behold a man, the East is his name.” From the borders of that east, then, not of this one, Balaam came, enlightened doubtless by that Lucifer of whom it is said: “How has Lucifer fallen from heaven, who rose in the morning?”

But let us see what Balak king of Moab says to him, having summoned him from the midst of the rivers, from the mountains of the east. “Come,” he says, “curse Jacob for me, and come, curse Israel for me.” In Latin the repetition seems almost superfluous, which says, “Curse Jacob for me, curse Israel for me.” But in the Greek, with the name Israel, a prefix is added to the verb of cursing, which our translators omitted, either believing it less fitting to say, or judging that no force of expression could be added by it. We, however, though we coin a word against usage, do so in order to gather the sense in full. It can be said, then: “Come, curse Jacob for me, and come, over-curse Israel for me.” By this it is shown that the word is repeated so that Balak might seem to demand a curse on Israel with greater force and more intensity than on Jacob. For as long as one is only Jacob, that is, engaged only in actions and works, he is attacked by lesser curses. But when he has advanced and has begun to sharpen and rouse the inner man to see God, with the eye of the mind unveiled, then he will be attacked by the enemy not only with curses but with over-curses, that is, with more vehement darts of curses. But at that time Balaam's mouth was full of cursing and bitterness, and under his tongue were toil and pain, and he sat in ambush with the rich. For he was expecting rewards from a rich king, to kill the innocent in secret. But God, who alone always does wonders, works salvation from enemies. For he put a word in his mouth, although his heart could not yet receive the word of God. For greed for reward was still in his heart; for which reason, even after the word of God which he had in his mouth, he said to Balak: “Come, and I will give you counsel”; and he taught him how to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, that they might eat things sacrificed to idols and commit sexual immorality. Because of this the people fell, and a great plague came upon them, until Phinehas, by killing the Israelite who was committing sexual immorality with the Midianite woman, appeased the Lord's fury. And after this, it says, Phinehas led out an army against the Midianites, and they killed twelve thousand men, and Balaam son of Beor with the sword. But we have brought these things in before their time by a kind of digression, to show that Balaam had the word of God not in his heart but only in his mouth. Meanwhile what he utters, what he speaks, he speaks from the word of God; and therefore what he says is the word of God.

He says, then: “How shall I curse one whom the Lord does not curse? Or how shall I over-curse one whom the Lord does not over-curse?” “Over-curse” is our venture, following the pattern of the Greek, since we wish to show the force of the word from the increase given by the prefix. What, then, shall we say? The Lord does not curse Jacob nor Israel; but do you think he curses anyone else? We read it written that the Lord says to the serpent: “Cursed are you among all the beasts of the earth.” And again to Adam: “Cursed is the earth in your works.” And to Cain too: “And now cursed are you from the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand”; and: “Cursed is everyone who makes a carved or molten image.” But lest you think these things are contained only in the old writings, you will find similar things in the Gospels too. For it is written that the Lord will say to those on the left: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire.” And when he says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” and, “Woe to you who are rich,” and every saying of this kind, what else does he seem to do but press them with curses? But what shall we say of the command given through the Apostle, where he says: “Bless, and do not curse”? Does he himself, then, who sets an example of life for men, do what he does not wish men to do? It is not so. For when God curses, he marks the desert of the one cursed and pronounces a sentence, as one whom neither the nature of the sin nor the disposition of the sinner deceives. But man, because he cannot know these things (for no one can see or know another's purpose and mind), even if he utters a curse with the intention of one who judges or pronounces sentence, cannot have a just cause for cursing where the disposition of the sinner is unknown; especially since human vice knows how to utter curses when perhaps it is provoked by abuse or injuries. Wishing to cut off this vice, so that we may not provoke curses with curses and abuse with abuse, the Apostle lays down a necessary command, that we should bless and not curse: so that the vice of abuse may be cut off, not so that the truth of judgment, which is hidden from men, and the authority to pronounce sentence should be abolished. And yet let us hear more carefully, from Balaam himself, or rather from the word God put in his mouth, why the Lord does not curse Jacob nor Israel: “Because from the tops of the mountains,” it says, “I will behold him, and from the hills I will understand him.” Because, it says, Israel is placed on high mountains and lofty hills, that is, in an exalted and steep life, to behold and understand which no one easily becomes fit unless he ascends to an eminent and lofty knowledge; therefore, it says, God does not curse him. For his life is high and very lofty, not lowly and cast down. Yet this does not seem to me to have been said of that Israel which is Israel according to the flesh, but of the one whose citizenship, while he walks on earth, is in heaven. Or if these words are also to be referred to that people, he rightly says with a distinction, “I will behold and I will understand,” so that it signifies the future time, doubtless that time when all Israel, coming to the faith of Christ, will be saved, and will be beheld from the mountains and from the hills: doubtless by those who, rising with Christ, have practiced a lofty and heavenly life on earth. And what he said of Jacob, “I will see,” and of Israel, “I will understand,” must also be taken with a most fitting distinction, so that the one refers to visible actions and the other to invisible faith and intelligible knowledge. Or if we turn these words to the age to come, that is, to the time of the resurrection, “I will see Jacob” can be understood as said of the bodies, while “I will understand Israel” signifies the spirit and soul of those who rise. “Behold,” it says, “a people will dwell alone and will not be reckoned among the nations.” This can indeed stand according to the letter too. For the people of Jacob alone was not mingled with other men, nor reckoned among the other nations. For it had certain privileges in its observances and in its ordinances, by which it was held set apart from the other nations. For just as the tribe of Levi is not mingled among the other tribes, nor numbered among them, so in this way all Israel is neither mixed with the other nations nor reckoned among them. These things indeed were in that people according to the form of the good things to come; but the true Jacob and the spiritual Israel will truly dwell alone among the nations. For if we have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and have come to the spiritual Judea, which is God's portion, and, though placed on earth, have our citizenship there, we are truly not reckoned among the other nations, nor are the borders of the other nations mixed with our borders, even if Sodom is restored to its former state and Egypt returns to its condition, and whatever else of this kind is written in the prophets. Yet no one will be made equal to that Jacob and spiritual Israel, no one mingled with them, when they have ascended to the church of the firstborn, even if these nations have been restored according to the prophetic sayings. For unless the branch of the wild olive has been grafted in and made a sharer in the root of the richness of the olive, how can it be joined and united to Jacob or Israel, since without this root no one can be called either Jacob or Israel? So neither can anyone from Jacob or Israel who sins be called Jacob or Israel, nor will anyone from the Gentiles who has entered the church of the Lord be reckoned any longer among the Gentiles. “Who will trace out the seed of Jacob? And who will number the people of Israel?” This is like what is written, that “God brought Abraham outside and said to him: Look at the heaven and number the stars, if you can number them; and he said: So shall your seed be. And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” And neither Abraham, nor any other man, nor even an angel, and perhaps not even the higher powers, could number the stars, nor the seed of Abraham, of which it is written, “So shall your seed be.” But God, of whom it is written, “He numbers the multitude of the stars and calls them all by name,” and who said, “I have commanded all the stars,” can trace out the seed of Jacob and number the people of Israel. For he alone knows who is truly Jacob and who is truly Israel. For he does not look to him who is a Jew outwardly, nor to the circumcision that is outwardly in the flesh; but he sees him who is a Jew inwardly and who is circumcised in heart, not in flesh. He alone, then, is the one who can number and trace out; and he, according to his ineffable and incomprehensible wisdom, after that heavenly pattern which he alone can know, also set these numbers which we have in hand, in which he commands that according to their kindreds and according to the houses of their families all males be numbered by name, head by head, from twenty years and upward, everyone who goes forth in the strength of Israel; and a certain sacred number of them is gathered, of which we have already spoken above, as the Lord granted. But this number is sacred and pleasing to God only when it is counted at his own command. But if anyone wishes to count against the Lord's command, even if he be David, even if a great prophet, he acts against the law, and is rebuked through the prophet, and suffers the things we read written in the second book of Kingdoms. He alone, then, who numbers the multitude of the stars, and who brought forth all things by measure and number and weight, traces out the seed of Jacob and numbers the people of Israel.

After this he seems to prophesy certain things as if about himself, when he says: “Let my soul die among the souls of the righteous, and let my seed be like the seed of the righteous.” But as far as concerns the person of that Balaam and of that Israel, this neither happened nor could happen; for he died not among them but at their hands. It will rather fit, as we said, the role of those others: who, though in the present age they are held a “vain people,” because they are without the grace of the Holy Spirit, yet at the end of the age, when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and all this prophecy spoken of Israel has been fulfilled in the spiritual Israel, then his soul will die with the souls of the righteous. For he will take up into himself faith in Christ, so that they too will say: “We who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death. For we were buried with him through baptism into death.” And again: “For if we die with him, we shall also reign with him.” And so it will truly be fulfilled in the Balaam understood spiritually that his soul dies among the souls of the righteous. And as for his saying, “Let my seed be like the seed of the righteous,” it could indeed be understood of that Balaam too, in the sense that those magi who, coming from the east, first came to worship Jesus seem to be of his seed, whether by succession of race or by tradition of teaching. For it is clearly established that they recognized the star which Balaam had foretold would rise in Israel, and so came and worshipped the king who was born in Israel. Yet it will also fit that people, according to what we said above. For not so much they themselves as their seed will become like the seed of the righteous, namely of those who, believing from among the Gentiles, have been justified in Christ. Hence it is clear that, as the Apostle says, “neither circumcision is anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.” And therefore let no one either boast of the antiquity of circumcision or glory in the novelty of uncircumcision. But as the Apostle says, let each test his own work, and then he will have glory in himself alone. So, finally, the prophet says: “Behold the man, and his work,” and his reward is said to be before the Lord, that he may render to each according to his works, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is glory and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.

In the previous discourse we tried, as far as was possible, to explain the first parts of Balaam’s prophecy. Now we have taken up the beginning of the second prophecy, so that, if the Lord deigns to breathe on us, we may also set out about it, according to our strength, whatever may occur to us. For it seemed unfitting to me, although these things appear difficult, to break off our treatment of them so as not to explain, one by one, what we are able to grasp. King Balak, then, as if thunderstruck and stunned by what he saw being said by Balaam against his hope (for he was hearing blessings instead of curses), could bear it no longer, interrupted his words, and said: “What have you done to me? I called you to curse my enemies, and behold, you have blessed them with a blessing.” The bitter king could not bear the sweetness of the blessings; he seeks curses, he demands curses. For he is of the kindred of the one to whom the Lord said: “Cursed are you above all the beasts of the earth.” But what did he answer him, the one in whose mouth God had placed a word? “Shall I not take care to speak whatever God puts into my mouth?” he says. At this Balak, thinking that Balaam had been terrified by the multitude of the Israelite people and for that reason had not dared to utter curses, believed that a change of place would help him, and said to him: “Come with me again to another place from which you will not see the whole of them, but you will see some part of them, and you will not see them all; and curse them for me from there.” Madman, who believed that the grace of Israel could be hidden by the obstruction of a place, and who did not know that “a city set on a mountain cannot be hidden”! “And he took him,” it says, “to a lookout of the field, to the top of a hewn mountain, and built seven altars there, and placed a calf and a ram on each altar; and Balaam said to Balak: ‘Stand by your sacrifice, and I will go to consult God.’ And God met Balaam and put a word into his mouth and said” (God, without doubt) “‘Return to Balak, and thus you shall speak.’ And he” (that is, Balak) “was standing beside his burnt offerings, and all the princes of Moab with him. And Balak said to him: ‘What has the Lord spoken?’” The affair was being conducted with profane sacrifices, and divination was being sought by magic art; yet God, wishing grace to abound there “where sin abounded,” deigns to be present and does not shrink from things done not according to the discipline of Israel but according to the error of the Gentiles. He is present, however, not at the sacrifices, but to meet the one who comes; and there he gives his word, and there he foretells the mysteries to come, where the faith and wonder of the Gentiles chiefly hang, so that those who will not believe our prophets may believe the divine sayings even in their own seers.

“And taking up his parable,” it says, “he said.” Through a parable, then, Balaam says: “Rise, Balak, and hear; give ear, witness, son of Zippor. God is not deceived like a man, nor is he terrified like a son of man. When he has spoken, will he not do it? Will he speak and not abide by it? Behold, I have been taken to bless; I will bless, and I will not turn it away. There will be no toil in Jacob, nor will grief be seen in Israel. The Lord his God is with him; the glories of princes are with him. God, who brought him out of Egypt, is like the glory of the unicorn for him. For there will be no augury in Jacob nor divination in Israel. In due time it will be told to Jacob and Israel what God will accomplish. Behold, the people will rise up like a lion’s whelp, and like a lion it will exult; it will not sleep until it devours the prey and drinks the blood of the wounded.” This is the content of the second prophecy in the words of Balaam. Let us see first, then, this very saying: “Rise, Balak, and hear.” For if it had not said above that he was standing beside his burnt offering, there would seem to be no great need to ask why he said, “Rise, Balak.” But now, since he urges to rise the one whom he had just said was standing, the prophetic word is not to be passed over idly. What he said above, then, that he was standing at his burnt offering, signifies that he was not standing rightly. For he was standing set in idolatry, and he was standing as an enemy of God, which was rather not to stand but to fall. As one, then, who must fall from that standing, or rather who had fallen, he now with prophetic understanding bids him rise: for by the very fact that he seemed to stand in idolatry, he had fallen. Let him who is such rise, then; let him rise by faith and become a witness: if he is converted, a witness of faith; but if he remains unbelieving, so that he may be a witness of his own condemnation.

But let us see what it is that he announces to him: “God,” he says, “is not deceived like a man, nor is he himself terrified like a son of man.” Do not, he says, hold such an opinion of God as to think that he is like a man, who can be deceived in what he says. For men are hindered by many occasions and vices from making what they say come true. Either they speak in anger, and when the anger ceases they have spoken in vain; or for the sake of fear, or desire, or boasting, and other things like these; and then whatever they have said while a vice was in command will certainly be in vain and empty. But God, in whom there is no passion, no frailty, says everything he says according to the merits of the case; and therefore he can never be deceived, because what is uttered by reason cannot be without reason. He is not, then, like a man who speaks in vain, “nor is he terrified like a son of man,” or (as we read in other copies) “nor does he terrify like a son of man.” Among men terror sometimes changes a decision; but God, who is above all things, by whom can he be terrified so as to change his decision? If, however, we take it according to what we said is read in other copies, that is, “nor does he terrify like a son of man,” the meaning will seem to be that men sometimes make terrors and threats out of boastfulness, even against those whom they cannot harm; but God does not terrify men in that way, as one who cannot punish; and if he terrifies, he terrifies with reason. For he terrifies in order to correct a man by the affliction of hearing, so that he who does evil, deterred by the word of threatening, may amend himself, and the actual punishment of his evil deeds may not come upon him. So God does not terrify as a man does; for a man (as we said) terrifies out of boastfulness, but God for amendment.