Balak son of Zippor is a frightened king of Moab who hires the Mesopotamian soothsayer Balaam, offering money and honor, to curse Israel. His delegation travels about 400 miles to Balaam's home at Pethor near the Euphrates (Numbers 22:2-7). Balak receives Balaam at the border and puts him to work almost at once, building seven altars for a bull and a ram on a high place of Baal, from which Balaam sees the whole camp. When the first oracle blesses Israel instead, Balak tries again. He reasons that Balaam cannot curse while facing the mystical power of the whole people, so he takes him to the top of Pisgah, where only the outermost part of the camp is visible. He supposes the odds would be more even if Balaam saw only part of Israel. Balak's scheme fails because God will not be bribed, forced, or cajoled into cursing His own people. Balaam is constrained to speak only the word God puts in his mouth, so the second oracle again blesses Israel. Balak's efforts, and those of the most famous diviner of the day, thus serve as a witness that God's plan for Israel goes forward despite the opposition of the surrounding nations. God gives the prophecies through blind Balaam to open the eyes of Balak, Israel, and later Bible readers to His purpose.

Balak, king of Moab, and all his people were so terrified of Israel's multitude at their border that they were sick with fear. They assumed Israel would destroy them as the Amorites under Sihon and Og had been destroyed, and that Israel would consume everything green in their land. Their fear was baseless, because God had told Israel not to trouble Moab, a kindred people, and Israel only needed safe passage while God fed them with manna. Acting on these false conclusions, Balak hired Balaam, the best-known cursing priest-diviner in the world, from 400 miles away, paying with gold in order to weaken Israel by a curse so that Moab could defeat them militarily. Moab's hostility was without cause, like the hatred Christ received without cause. God therefore stood up to plead Israel's cause against Balak and Balaam, without Israel even knowing what was happening. The snare laid for the innocent fell back on the one who set it, as Balaam's death shows. Balak's scheme also parallels the pattern in which the righteous are opposed by those intimidated by their righteousness, a pattern prophesied to recur at the end time.

Balak, whose name means Devastator, was the son of Zippor (Sparrow) and king of Moab. When Israel camped opposite Jericho after crushing Sihon and Og, he and Moab grew so afraid that they were literally sick with dread. The fear was groundless, since God had told Israel to leave the Moabites alone, and Israel was still fed with manna and had no designs on Moab's livestock and grain. Balak acted on what his own imagination invented, which was only human nature. A little communication with Moses could have avoided everything that followed. Instead he allied with the elders of Midian, a partnership that later became a thorn in Israel's side. With only a puny army, he chose spiritual warfare and sent for Balaam, the most renowned professional curser in the known world, from Pethor near the Euphrates. He knew what God had done for Israel and so needed the very best, and he was willing to give up nearly all his wealth. He sent the diviner's fee with his first envoys and, when Balaam stalled, sent more numerous and more honorable princes with a higher price and a pleading offer to do whatever Balaam asked. Balak trusted that whomever Balaam cursed would be cursed, but God turned the curse into blessing. Because of Balak's scheme, 24,000 Israelites died through Balaam's counsel to snare them with idolatry and sexual immorality.