Now therefore please stay here tonight as well, that I may know what else the LORD will speak to me.”
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 19. To stay. His desiring them to stay, after he had been fully informed already that it was not God’s will he should go, came from the inclination he had to gratify Balac for the sake of worldly gain. And this perverse disposition God punished by permitting him to go, (though not to curse the people, as he would willingly have done) and suffering him to fall still deeper and deeper into sin, till he came at last to give that abominable counsel against the people of God, which ended in his own destruction. So sad a thing it is to indulge a passion for money. Challoner. Saint Augustine q. 48.—Philo (de vita, Mos. i) thinks that Balaam feigned this leave of God, verse 22. Calmet.