Numbers 23:1–6

Numbers 23:1 — Seven Altars, Seven Animals Balaam's opening command is precise and liturgically charged. The number seven carries deep covenantal resonance throughout the ancient Near East and in Israel's own cult (cf. the seven-branched menorah, the seven days of creation, the sabbatical cycle). Balaam specifies seven altars and seven pairs of sacrificial animals, mirroring the completeness and sacred solemnity that Israel's own worship demanded. This is not Israelite ritual, however. Balaam is a non-Israelite diviner from Pethor in Aram (Num 22:5), and his instructions draw on the broader ancient Near Eastern tradition of extispicy and omen-seeking — where the quality and number of sacrifices were believed to dispose the deity toward the petitioner's request. The sevenfold sacrifice is, from Balak's perspective, a kind of spiritual leverage.

Numbers 23:2 — Balak's Compliance The king of Moab executes the instructions without question or delay. The repetition of "Balak and Balaam" as joint offerers on "every altar" underscores the full investment of royal authority behind this enterprise. Balak has hired Balaam (Num 22:7, 17) and now participates personally in the rites — he is not a bystander but a co-agent of the intended curse. The narrative details the completeness of compliance: one bull and one ram on each of the seven altars, fourteen animals in total. The thoroughness of the preparation heightens the subsequent irony: all this ritual precision will avail Balak nothing.

Numbers 23:3 — Balaam's Tentative Approach Balaam's language here is notably humble and uncertain: "Perhaps Yahweh will come to meet me." The Hebrew particle 'ulay (perhaps) is theologically significant. Unlike a court prophet who could invoke YHWH at will, Balaam acknowledges that the divine encounter is not guaranteed by ritual performance. He does not command God; he waits upon Him. The phrase "come to meet me" (liqra'ti) recalls the language of theophany in Israel's own tradition — God going out to meet Moses (Ex 4:27) or appearing to the patriarchs. Balaam's going apart, likely to a high place (shephi, "a bare height"), suggests the isolation necessary for receiving a divine word, parallel to the prophetic tradition of withdrawal before encounter (1 Kgs 19:8–13). Even a pagan seer, it seems, knows that God cannot be conjured — only awaited.

Numbers 23:4 — God Meets Balaam The text states plainly: "God met Balaam." There is no qualifying uncertainty. Despite the ambiguity of Balaam's motives and the wholly alien context of a foreign king's political agenda, the God of Israel initiates the encounter. Balaam's report to God is almost administrative: "I have prepared the seven altars, and I have offered up a bull and a ram on every altar." He presents his credentials as a diligent officiant. The divine response, rather than evaluating the sacrifice's worth, immediately moves to purpose — the word that must be spoken.

Numbers 23:5 — The Word Placed in Balaam's Mouth This is the theological hinge of the entire episode. "Yahweh put a word in Balaam's mouth" — the Hebrew (wayyasem YHWH davar be-fi Bil'am) is identical in structure to God's commissioning of Moses (Ex 4:15) and anticipates the language of prophetic inspiration throughout the Deuteronomistic and classical prophetic traditions (Jer 1:9; Isa 51:16). Balaam does not generate the oracle; he receives it. He is, despite himself, reduced to the role of instrument. The mouth that Balak hired to curse becomes the mouth through which blessing will be pronounced. Catholic tradition reads this mechanism — the divine word overriding the human speaker's own intentions — as a potent illustration of the nature of inspired speech.

Numbers 23:6 — The Scene Restored The narrative returns the reader to Balak, standing sentinel by the burnt offerings, surrounded by all the princes of Moab. The image is almost ceremonially still: a king with his court awaiting the word of an oracle. The phrase "behold, he was standing" (v'hineh nitzav) introduces a moment of dramatic arrest — the reader sees what Balaam sees upon his return, the full weight of royal expectation. Balak does not know yet that the word placed in Balaam's mouth will devastate his hopes entirely.

Catholic tradition has long recognized the Balaam narrative as one of the most theologically rich episodes in the Torah, precisely because it demonstrates divine sovereignty operating outside the visible bounds of the covenant community. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God "has not left himself without witness" among the nations (CCC 2566, drawing on Acts 14:17), and Balaam's encounter illustrates this: the God of Israel meets a Gentile seer and commandeers his voice.

The Church Fathers were fascinated by Balaam's double nature. St. Augustine, in City of God (XVIII.24), acknowledges that Balaam was both a sinner (motivated by greed, cf. 2 Pet 2:15; Jude 11) and a genuine instrument of prophetic revelation — a paradox that illuminates Augustine's own theology of grace operating independently of human merit. Origen, in his Homilies on Numbers, reads Balaam typologically as a figure for those who possess prophetic gifts without moral conformity to the truth they proclaim — a warning against divorcing charism from virtue.

The sevenfold sacrifice, while not Israelite, is read by Origen and later by St. Gregory of Nyssa as pointing forward to the one perfect sacrifice: all human sacrificial striving, even outside the covenant, reaches after what is only fully realized in the Eucharist, the single oblation of Christ that renders all other sacrifices complete (cf. CCC 1330, Heb 10:14). The act of God placing His word directly in Balaam's mouth prefigures the theology of prophetic inspiration defined at the Council of Trent and reaffirmed in Dei Verbum §11: that the sacred authors wrote "as true authors" yet under the movement of the Holy Spirit, who used their faculties while guaranteeing what He willed to reveal. Balaam is an extreme case — a man whose will ran counter to God's — yet even here the divine word is sovereign and unimpeded.

Contemporary Catholics can find in these six verses a bracing corrective to the perennial temptation to treat prayer and liturgy as mechanisms of control — as tools to make God do what we want. Balak's seven altars are a monument to this impulse: elaborate, expensive, religiously serious, and ultimately futile as a means of bending the divine will. The Catholic tradition of liturgical prayer, from the Mass to the Divine Office, is not a technique for getting God to cooperate with our agenda but an act of receptive surrender to His word, as Balaam ultimately — and involuntarily — demonstrates. When we light candles, count novenas, or attend Mass in crisis moments, the question is whether we are Balak (demanding a favorable oracle) or Balaam-at-his-best (going apart and waiting, "perhaps He will come to meet me"). Concretely: bring your petitions before God in prayer this week, but consciously release the outcome. After your request, be still and ask: what word is God putting in my mouth — or in my situation — that I have not yet been willing to hear?