🔢WEB · Numbers 23:19
What does Numbers 23:19 mean?
"God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good?"
— Numbers 23:19 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Yahweh met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and said, “Return to Balak, and say this.”
He came to him, and behold, he was standing by his burnt offering, and the princes of Moab with him. Balak said to him, “What has Yahweh spoken?”
He took up his parable, and said, “Rise up, Balak, and hear! Listen to me, you son of Zippor.
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good?
Behold, I have received a command to bless. He has blessed, and I can’t reverse it.
He has not seen iniquity in Jacob. Neither has he seen perverseness in Israel. Yahweh his God is with him. The shout of a king is among them.
God brings them out of Egypt. He has as it were the strength of the wild ox.
Explanation
Numbers 23:19 comes from one of the oracles of Balaam, a pagan prophet hired by Balak, king of Moab, to curse Israel as the people journeyed toward the Promised Land. Balaam, though not an Israelite and not entirely upright in character, found himself unable to speak anything but what God gave him to say. In this particular oracle, after Balak's frustration that Balaam had blessed Israel instead of cursing them, Balaam explains why: God had already committed himself to blessing Israel, and that commitment could not be reversed by human pressure or bribery.
In plain language, the verse says that God is fundamentally different from human beings in his reliability. People often lie, and even when they don't intend to deceive, they frequently change their minds, forget promises, or fail to follow through. God does neither. He does not lie, and he does not "repent" in the sense of regretting a decision and reversing course the way a person might. The verse closes with a rhetorical question that drives the point home: when God speaks a word or makes a promise, it will certainly come to pass. There is no gap between his word and his action.
Theologically, this verse is a strong statement about the character of God, particularly his truthfulness and immutability. Because God is not bound by the limitations, ignorance, or moral weakness that cause humans to break promises, his covenant word is utterly dependable. In the immediate context, this means Balak cannot buy a different outcome; God had promised to bless Abraham's descendants, and that promise stands regardless of Moab's schemes or Balaam's own incl
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