An Opened Eye

Sources

SHETHUM HA’AYIN.’ The commentators have not found the root of this word [shethum] anywhere else in Scripture. Onkelos translated it: “who sees well,” as [if to say] “open-eyed,” and in the language of the Sages we find: “sufficient time sheyishtom and to close it up” — meaning to say: [enough time to open a hole in the barrel of wine] — and to stop it up again. Perhaps the word [shethum] is a composite one [consisting of the two words shethui mah — “whatever is put” before the eye], from the root ‘shithi’ (My setting) these My signs…

Ramban on Numbers 24:3:1

שתום העין WITH THE PENETRATING EYE — his eye was bored out and had been extracted and its eye socket could be seen to be open. The word שתום used in the sense of “boring a hole” is a Mishnaic usage: sufficient time that we can bore a hole (ישתום) in the cask and stop it up, and it (the clay of which the stopper is made) can dry (Avodah Zarah 69a). And our Rabbis said, Because he had said, (Numbers 23:10) ומספר את רבע ישראל, meaning that the Holy One, blessed be He, occupies Himself with counting the issue of the marital life of the Israelites…

Rashi on Numbers 24:3:2

This then is why the Torah wrote three distinct statements to make it unmistakably clear that here we speak about Bileam initiating these blessings. 1) נאם בלעם (3 ,ויאמר (2 ,וישא משלו. It should be recorded forever who it was who thought up these words and uttered them. The reason that Bileam (or the Torah) recorded three separate words identifying the speaker may be analogous to what we learned in the Mishnah Peah 7,1. We are taught there that in order to be certain that a farmer is guilty of violating the law against harvesting fruit from…

Or HaChaim on Numbers 24:3:3

But he took up the parable of his prophecy, and said: Bileam, son of Beor, speaketh; the man speaketh who is more honourable than his father, (because) the dark mysteries hidden from the prophets have been revealed to him; and who, because he was not circumcised, fell upon his face when the angel stood over against him:

Targum Jonathan on Numbers 24:3

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