NOTES for Num 24:1-25
In the end Balaam still does what he cannot help doing as a true prophet: he blesses the people of God. He blesses them despite all the promises and threats of Balak, who invited him. This is understandable: Balaam knows perfectly well what happens to a prophet who betrays his calling. He had hardly heard anything about Yahweh before: he was from Mesopotamia, and rumors about the Hebrews could scarcely have reached there, especially since even closer neighbors then knew nothing definite about them.
Balaam knew only one thing for certain: the very voice he had heard, most likely in childhood, and after hearing which he had become a prophet, now commanded him to bless this people that had appeared from who knew where, not to curse it. There may have been cases when everything was not so unambiguous. It was not by chance that Balak invited Balaam in order to curse the people, in effect giving him a kind of commission for a curse, and Balaam did go, although the first signs that he should not go had been given to him even before he set out. There must have been such cases when a prophet could call for help on the one whose voice he heard.
He could make use of the power that stood behind him. In those days every prophet was also partly a magician; he possessed a power that he could control to a certain degree. If the desire to control the power, to master it, won out, the prophet disappeared and a magician, a tribal sorcerer, took his place. If the prophet consistently renounced everything magical that the prophetic experience of his age implied, renounced mastering the power and every attempt to manipulate it, he could become a true prophet, who could sometimes hear the voice of God and see angels.
Everything here depended on the choice of the person himself, as it always does on every spiritual path. For His part, God does not want anyone's destruction; He wants to save everyone and give everyone the possibility of hearing Him and communicating with Him. Such a moment of truth came for Balaam too, when the choice arose: whether to bless the people as had been revealed to him, or to try to use the power he had received in order to curse them. Balaam chooses the first, remaining a prophet and becoming God's witness, contrary to what Balak expects from him.