Numbers — Chapter 24

How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel! The tents of Israel are compared to shady valleys, to gardens by rivers, to tabernacles fixed by the Lord, to cedars beside the waters — fourfold comparison signifying beauty, fruitfulness, divine stability, and exaltation.

Water shall flow from his bucket, and his seed shall be in many waters. Lapide: Israel's posterity will be fecund; the Chaldaean paraphrast reads it of the kings and ultimately the Messiah springing from Israel's seed.

I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh. A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel. The great Messianic prophecy of Balaam.

Ships shall come from Italy and shall overcome the Assyrians, and shall afflict the Hebrews, and at the last they also shall perish. Lapide takes this as a prophecy of Rome — the Romans who subdued both the Near Eastern powers and eventually Jerusalem — and of Rome's own eventual end.