Balaam

But Balaam too, being a soothsayer and a diviner, who carried his divinations in his hand, as the Scripture says, and who had perfected for himself through the meddlesome art of augury the teaching that comes from demons, is recorded by the Scripture to be counselled by God.

Knowing these things, they ought not to have been so exalted as to bear witness to prophecy in themselves, who are shown to fall short even of the exactness of Balaam the soothsayer.

" This the astrologer said, like Balaam of old — not because astrology spoke the truth, but because God set forth the things of the truth through its opposites, so that every pretext might be taken away from the impious.

For when the initiates of the idols and Nachor came to words with one another — Nachor like another Balaam, who once, in the time of Balak, having set out to curse Israel, blessed him with manifold blessings — so too Nachor strongly withstood the unwise and senseless wise men.

Balaam the prophet in Numbers, summoned by king Balak to curse Israel, with which he was entering battle, while he was being filled with the spirit, pronounced not the malediction to which he had come, but the benediction which the spirit suggested to him in that very hour — having professed before, among the king's messengers, and presently before the king himself, that he would pronounce what Go …

Here too, then, the same one forbids to think what ought to be answered before tribunals, who both suggested to Balaam what he had not thought — nay, contrary to what he had thought — and to Moses, pleading slowness of tongue, promised a mouth.