He [Balak] sent messengers to Balaam son of Be’or – to Petor
on the river, the land of his people – to call for him,
saying, “A people has come out of Egypt, and behold,
they have covered the view of the land, and they
are stationed opposite me.”
Numbers 22:5
The consistent laws of nature obscure G-d’s presence in the world. Nature thus “covers” Divinity, and it is our Divine mission to reveal the Divinity behind nature’s façade.
As we gradually spread Divine consciousness, we are, so to speak, substituting one cover for another, “covering” the world with Divine consciousness instead of letting nature cover over G-d’s presence. Allegorically, this is what the evil King Balak was afraid of: the Jewish people were “covering the land” with Divine consciousness, threatening the power of evil.
What enabled the Jewish people to do this was the fact that they “came out of Egypt,” meaning that the tribulations of exile had prepared them for their unique spiritual destiny. Similarly, the spiritual consciousness that we attain by overcoming the challenges of our present exile enables us to reveal G-d’s presence in the world today, preparing us for when “the world will be filled with knowledge of G-d as water covers the seabed.”
--Daily Wisdom Volume 3