NOTES for Num 23:1-30
Human attempts to come to terms with God have never ceased. Nor, for that matter, attempts to come to terms with those pagan gods whom people often, if they did not create them themselves, at least imagined in their own image and likeness. So it was with Balak - at first he wanted only one thing: the defeat of the people of God in the war that lay ahead for him with them. Balaam's God was needed by him only as a force that could be set against the people and their incomprehensible God. For Balak there exists only force, natural and supernatural, and both kinds are equally suitable for achieving the goal he has set. For Balak, Balaam is only a specialist in managing supernatural power, nothing more.
He may have guessed that a prophet and prophecy are something more than such management, but judging by the story, this something more did not interest him. Balaam, however, turned out to be a real prophet, even though a pagan one. Real because he refused to follow anyone or anything except the voice that he heard and that led him. Such were real prophets - judging by what we know about them today, they did not always understand whom exactly they served, but they knew one thing firmly: their life presupposed a path and service.
One must not betray the experience that opens to you in the depths of your own heart; one must not fail to listen to the voice that sounds there, and one must not betray one's own path - otherwise catastrophe is inevitable, the collapse of one's whole life. Balaam follows these rules - not always consistently, but always sincerely, and what God needs from a person first of all is sincerity, faithfulness to oneself, and faithfulness to one's own path. Balak, however, wants Balaam simply to solve the task set before him - otherwise why invite him at all? This is where they clashed: Balaam refuses to act as Balak demands, despite both promises and threats.
He even refuses the compromise Balak offers: neither to bless the people nor to curse them. Balak was, in the end, even ready for that option - since the maximum had failed - but Balaam cannot betray himself. In all likelihood, he knew nothing about YHWH, at least at first, when Balak invited him to come. But he knew that one must not betray oneself and the One who speaks in the heart, whoever He may be. This faithfulness to himself and to his path allowed Balaam to hear the God whom he had not known before.