a survivor · noun, common masculine singular absolute
city
מֵעִֽירme.'Ir
H5892
a city (a place guarded by waking or a watch) in the wi… · preposition + noun, common feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 49:10 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the pe…
Psalms 2:1-12 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
Micah 5:2 But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be…
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Psalms 21:7-10 For the king trusteth in the LORD, and through the mercy of the most High he shall not be moved.
Psalms 72:10-11 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.
Isaiah 11:10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest s…
Micah 5:4 And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God; and they shall abide: for now shall…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Numbers 24:15–end
The office of prophets was both to bless and to prophesy in the name of the Lord. Balaam, as a prophet, per force had blessed Israel; here he foretels future events.
I. His preface is much the same as that, Num 24:3, Num 24:4. He personates a true prophet admirably well, God permitting and directing him to do so, because, whatever he was, the prophecy itself was a true prophecy. He boasts, 1. That his eyes are open (Num 24:15), for prophets were in old time called seers (Sa1 9:9), because they must speak what they had seen, and therefore, before they opened their lips, it was necessary that they should have their eyes open. 2. That he has heard the words of God, which many do that do not hee…
Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion--David, and particularly Christ.
that remaineth of the city--those who flee from the field to fortified places (Psa 60:9).
John Gill on Numbers 24:19
Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion,.... Meaning either David, or rather the Messiah; and so Jarchi interprets this of another ruler out of Jacob, even of the Messiah, of whom it is said, he shall have dominion from sea to sea; Psalm 72:8,
and shall destroy him, that remaineth of the city; chief city of Edom, or of any of the cities of it, signifying that there should be none left, see Obadiah 1:18, this is also applied to the days of the Messiah, in the ancient writings of the Jews (q).
(q) Bemidbar Rabba, fol. 179. 3.
John Calvin on Numbers 24:17-19
I shall see him, but not now. [175] Though the verbs are in the future tense, they are used for the present; and again, the pronoun him designates some one who has not yet been mentioned; and this is a tolerably common usage with the Hebrew, especially when referring to Jerusalem, or God, or some very distinguished man. The relative is, therefore, here put kat exochen for the antecedent: and although there can be no doubt but that he alluded to the people of Israel, it is still a question whether he designates the head or the whole body; on which point I do not make much contention, since it is substantially the same thing.
The reason why Balaam postpones his prophecies to a distant period,…
The Church Fathers
"And there shall rise up one out of Jacob, and he shall destroy him that is delivered from the city." That one, he says, who shall rise up as a star out of Jacob, shall destroy him that is delivered from the city. Not in this alone, but in almost every prophetic style, the things that are said are said in speech quite involved and obscure. For it did not please the Holy Spirit, who willed these things to be written, that these should be set plainly and, so to say, to be trodden under the feet of the unskilled, but he so provided that, while they seem to be held publicly, yet, hidden by the obscurity of the words, they should be kept covered in mysteries and in secrets. And now, then, this that he says: "he shall destroy him that is delivered from the city," unless you look to the prophetic custom, of which it is said: "all prophecy cannot stand by its own solution," the understanding will seem far more difficult. Let us see, however, whether perhaps in this way it can be explained. Let us understand "the city" here as the world, just as also in the Gospels it is said of the prodigal son, who squandered the substance of his father, that "he went," it says, "to a certain chief man of the city in that region," by whom, being received, he is sent into the field to feed swine. And here too, then, the city, of which that man was chief, is understood as this world. Therefore him that is delivered from this city, that is, whom Christ delivers from this world, he destroys him. For he says to him that: "he who shall destroy his soul for my sake, shall make it safe." By a saving destruction, therefore, Jesus shall destroy him whom he shall have delivered from the city of this world. And so we too, if we wish to come to salvation and to be delivered from this world, ought to destroy our souls with a useful and necessary destruction. For he destroys his soul according to Christ who curbs its desires, who cuts back its cravings, who chastises its luxury and dissoluteness, and in nothing at all does his own will, but the will of God; and through these things the soul is said to perish. For its former life perishes and it begins to lead a new life, which is in Christ. Similar to this saying is also that: "if we die together, we shall also live together," and that: "but if you are dead to the elements of the world, how, as though living in this world, do you make decrees?"…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Messiah — (Heb. mashiah), in all the thirty-nine instances of its occurring in the Old Testament, is rendered by the LXX. “Christos.” It means anointed. Thus priests (Ex. 28:41; 40:15; Num. 3:3), prophets (1…
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
"And a ruler shall come out of Jacob, and destroy what is left out of cities." The subject to ירדּ is indefinite, and to be supplied from the verb itself. We have to think of the ruler foretold as star and sceptre. The abbreviated form וירדּ is not used for the future ירדּה, but is jussive in its force. One out of Jacob shall rule. מעיר is employed in a collected and general sense, as in Psa 72:16. Out of every city in which there is a remnant of Edom, it shall be destroyed. שׁריד is equivalent to אדום שׁארית (Amo 9:12). The explanation, "destroy the remnant out of the city, namely, out of the holy city of Jerusalem" (Ewald and Baur), is forced, and cannot be sustained from the parallelism.
Tyndale Open Study Notes on Numbers 24:17
A star was a symbol for a king (cp. Isa 14:12; Matt 2:1-10), and a scepter was an image of power and majesty (cp. Gen 49:10; Ps 45:6). King David fits the description historically. The Moabites, whose defeat is mentioned in Num 24:17, were among the many peoples conquered during his reign (2 Sam 8:2), though Moab remained a dangerous enemy of Israel after David’s time (cp. 2 Kgs 3:1-27; Isa 15–16; Jer 48). Many interpreters have extended the image beyond David. Christians identify Jesus of Nazareth with a star (cp. Matt 2:2; 2 Pet 1:19; Rev 2:28; 22:16) and a scepter (cp. Heb 1:8). • The people of Sheth were probably the ancient Sutu, though it might refer to Edom/Seir (also conquered by Dav…
וירד מיעקב AND OUT OF JACOB ONE SHALL RULE — and there will be yet another ruler from Jacob,
והאביד שריד מעיר AND HE WILL DESTROY THE REMNANT OF THE CITY — the most important city of Edom, and that is Rome. It is of King Messiah that he is thus speaking, of whom it is said, (Psalms 72:8) “And he shall have dominion (וירד) from sea to sea”; (Obadiah v. 18) “And there shall be no remnant (שריד) of the house of Esau".
