I recognized the fact that God had not sent him, for he had spoken the prophecy against me as a hired agent of Tobiah and Sanballat. ¹ 

He had been hired to scare me so that I would do this and thereby sin. They would thus bring reproach on me and I ¹  would be discredited. ² 

for they had not met the Israelites with food ¹  and water, but instead had hired Balaam to curse them. (Our God, however, turned the curse into blessing.)