Once more Balaam lifted up an oracle, saying: “Ah, who can live unless God has ordained it?
The office of prophets was both to bless and to prophesy in the name of the Lord. Balaam, as a prophet, per force had blessed Israel; here he foretels future events. I. His preface is much the same as that, Num 24:3, Num 24:4. He personates a true prophet admirably well, God permitting and directing him to do so, because, whatever he was, the prophecy itself was a true prophecy.
Commenting on Numbers 24:15-25
And ships shall come from the coast of Chittim,.... Kittim was the son of Javan, Gen 10:4 and so designs some part of Greece: Josephus (r) says that Kittim possessed the island now called Cyprus, in which was a city now called Citium, after his name; Macedonia, a considerable part of Greece, is called the land of Cittim,"And it happened, after that Alexander son of...
who shall live when God doeth this!--Few shall escape the desolation that shall send a Nebuchadnezzar to scourge all those regions.