Commentaire sur Les Nombres 23:20

הנה ברך לקחתי BEHOLD, I HAVE RECEIVED COMMANDMENT TO BLESS — You ask me derisively, (v. 17) “What hath the Lord spoken”? I will tell you: I have received an order from Him to bless them.

וברך, Israel is blessed already.

הנה ברו לקחתי, "Behold, I am bidden to bless, etc." According to our explanation of 23,5 that the word דבר there meant "a thing," i.e. that G'd inserted something inside Bileam's mouth which would insulate the Holy Spirit from Bileam's unworthy mouth, he referred to this when he said לקחתי. This "thing" must have been spiritual in the sense that it was abstract. This may be what the Yalkut Shimoni had in mind when the author called it a מלאך, an agent of G'd. The author of the Yalkut however, does not give the same reason that we gave but says that this מלאך was inserted in Bileam's mouth to prevent him from uttering a curse. Basically, what the Yalkut says and what we have said amounts to the same idea. When Bileam referred to this alien presence in his mouth as הנה, "a presence of some kind," he described this presence as the source of the blessings he was forced to utter. The repeat of the word ברך means that not only did G'd put the potential blessing in his mouth but He made him utter it. The whole verse is Bileam's attempt to show Balak that he acts under compulsion. He adds: ולא אשיבנו, "I cannot even retract it."