24:24 Ships will come from the coast of Kittim, 5
and will afflict Asshur, 6 and will afflict Eber,
and he will also perish forever.” 7
24:1 8 When Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, 9 he did not go as at the other times 10 to seek for omens, 11 but he set his face 12 toward the wilderness.
1:7 from Judah, Nahshon 13 son of Amminadab;
23:1 Here is a message about Tyre:
Wail, you large ships, 14
for the port is too devastated to enter! 15
From the land of Cyprus 16 this news is announced to them.
23:12 He said,
“You will no longer celebrate,
oppressed 17 virgin daughter Sidon!
Get up, travel to Cyprus,
but you will find no relief there.” 18
2:10 Go west 19 across the sea to the coasts of Cyprus 20 and see.
Send someone east to Kedar 21 and have them look carefully.
See if such a thing as this has ever happened:
27:6 They made your oars from oaks of Bashan;
they made your deck 22 with cypresses 23 from the Kittean isles. 24
1 sn The descendants of Elishah populated Cyprus.
2 sn The descendants of Tarshish settled along the southern coast of what is modern Turkey. However, some identify the site Tarshish (see Jonah 1:3) with Sardinia or Spain.
3 sn The name Kittim is associated with Cyprus, as well as coastlands east of Rhodes. It is used in later texts to refer to the Romans.
4 tc Most of the MT
5 tc The MT is difficult. The Kittim refers normally to Cyprus, or any maritime people to the west. W. F. Albright proposed emending the line to “islands will gather in the north, ships from the distant sea” (“The Oracles of Balaam,” JBL 63 [1944]: 222-23). Some commentators accept that reading as the original state of the text, since the present MT makes little sense.
6 tn Or perhaps “Assyria” (so NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).
7 tn Or “it will end in utter destruction.”
8 sn For a thorough study of the arrangement of this passage, see E. B. Smick, “A Study of the Structure of the Third Balaam Oracle,” The Law and the Prophets, 242-52. He sees the oracle as having an introductory strophe (vv. 3, 4), followed by two stanzas (vv. 5, 6) that introduce the body (vv. 7b-9b) before the final benediction (v. 9b).
9 tn Heb “it was good in the eyes of the
10 tn Heb “as time after time.”
11 tn The word נְחָשִׁים (nÿkhashim) means “omens,” or possibly “auguries.” Balaam is not even making a pretense now of looking for such things, because they are not going to work. God has overruled them.
12 tn The idiom signifies that he had a determination and resolution to look out over where the Israelites were, so that he could appreciate more their presence and use that as the basis for his expressing of the oracle.
13 sn Nahshon was an ancestor of Boaz and David, and therefore of Christ (Luke 3:32-33).
14 tn Heb “ships of Tarshish.” This probably refers to large ships either made in or capable of traveling to the distant western port of Tarshish.
15 tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “for it is destroyed, from a house, from entering.” The translation assumes that the mem (מ) on בַּיִת (bayit) was originally an enclitic mem suffixed to the preceding verb. This assumption allows one to take בַּיִת as the subject of the preceding verb. It is used in a metaphorical sense for the port city of Tyre. The preposition min (מִן) prefixed to בּוֹא (bo’) indicates negative consequence: “so that no one can enter.” See BDB 583 s.v. מִן 7.b.
16 tn Heb “the Kittim,” a designation for the people of Cyprus. See HALOT 504-05 s.v. כִּתִּיִּים.
17 tn Or “violated, raped,” the point being that Daughter Sidon has lost her virginity in the most brutal manner possible.
18 tn Heb “[to the] Kittim, get up, cross over; even there there will be no rest for you.” On “Kittim” see the note on “Cyprus” at v. 1.
19 tn Heb “For go west.”
20 tn Heb “pass over to the coasts of Kittim.” The words “west across the sea” in this line and “east of” in the next are implicit in the text and are supplied in the translation to give geographical orientation.
21 sn Kedar is the home of the Bedouin tribes in the Syro-Arabian desert. See Gen 25:18 and Jer 49:38. See also the previous note for the significance of the reference here.
22 tn Or “hull.”
23 tc The Hebrew reads “Your deck they made ivory, daughter of Assyria.” The syntactically difficult “ivory” is understood here as dittography and omitted, though some construe this to refer to ivory inlays. “Daughter of Assyria” is understood here as improper word division and the vowels repointed as “cypresses.”
24 tn Heb “from the coastlands (or islands) of Kittim,” generally understood to be a reference to the island of Cyprus, where the Phoenicians had a trading colony on the southeast coast. Many modern English versions have “Cyprus” (CEV, TEV), “the coastlands of Cyprus” (NASB), “the coasts of Cyprus” (NIV, NRSV), or “the southern coasts of Cyprus” (NLT).