Num 23:20
“Behold, I have received to bless: and He hath blessed; and I cannot turn it.” Balaam meets Balak’s expectation that he will take back the blessing that he has uttered, with the declaration, that God does not alter His purposes like changeable and fickle men, but keeps His word unalterably, and carries it into execution. The unchangeableness of the divine purposes is a necessary consequence of the unchangeableness of the divine nature. With regard to His own counsels, God repents of nothing; but this does not prevent the repentance of God, understood as an anthropopathic expression, denoting the pain experienced by the love of God, on account of the destruction of its creatures (see at Gen 6:6, and Exo 32:14). The ה before הוּא Num 23:19) is the interrogative ה (see Ges. §100, 4). The two clauses of Num 23:19, “Hath He spoken,” etc., taken by themselves, are no doubt of universal application; but taken in connection with the context, they relate specially to what God had spoken through Balaam, in his first utterance with reference to Israel, as we may see from the more precise explanation in Num 23:20, “Behold, I have received to bless’ (לקח, taken, accepted), etc. השׁיב, to lead back, to make a thing retrograde (Isa 43:13). Samuel afterwards refused Saul’s request in these words of Balaam (Num 23:19), when he entreated him to revoke his rejection on the part of God (1Sa 15:29).