Numbers 24:23

And he took up his parable, and said, Alas, who shall live when God doeth this!

And he took up his parable, and said. [The Septuagint introduces this by: Kai idoon ton Oog , 'and when he looked on Og.']

Alas! who shall live when God doeth this? х Miy (H4310) yichªyeh (H2421) misumow (H7760) 'Eel (H410)] - who shall live from (after) God's setting (appointing) it? [Septuagint, tis zeesetai hotan thee tauta ho Theos? Who shall live when (since) God shall do this? Havernick thinks that this vexed passage can receive a satisfactory explanation only by supposing an Aramaism; 'for here the words, chaayaah min, cannot, according to the usage of the language, mean anything else than to revive, to recover from anything (2 Kings 1:2; 2 Kings 8:8); and sum is here simply after the Aramaic-wound; hence, smart, suffering in general: so that the clause may be translated thus: 'Who can recover from his wound (from that inflicted on him), O Almighty?' ('Historico-Critical Introduction to the Old Testament,' p. 88.)]

Assuming this new utterance of Balaam to be a continuance of the concluding strain in the last, the import of the exclamation is-so terrible will be the massacre, so widespread the desolation, that few shall escape the judgment that shall send a Nebuchadnezzar to scourge all those regions. But Hengstenberg, considering that the exclamation occurs on the commencement of a new maashaal (H4912), joins it, with more critical accuracy, to the prediction that follows; and the cry of distress which escaped from the lips of Balaam was owing to the pain he felt in knowing that the calamity he was about to announce would fall directly upon his own people, and he was constrained to proclaim it.