Or HaChaim on Numbers 24:8/אור החיים על במדבר כ״ד:ח׳

1 א־ל מוציאו ממצרים, "The G'd who has taken them out from Egypt, etc." We approach this on the basis of the tradition that when the Israelites left Egypt they had isolated all the sparks of sanctity which had been trapped inside Egypt by the forces of the קליפה, spiritually negative forces. We have explained already that holiness possesses the power to seek out and identify its branches (which had been lost temporarily). When Bileam speaks about מוציאו…כתועפות ראם לו, the subject is the Jewish people. [The word א־ל then is not to be translated as plain "G'd," but as "the divine power possessed by Israel." Ed.] These Israeliteshad taken out the sparks of sanctity previously trapped inside of Egypt by dint of their own holiness. The words: "he consumes nations which are its enemies" refer to the process which liberates the sparks of sanctity trapped inside the bodies of the pagans. These "sparks" will be absorbed by the collective "Soul" of the community of Israel. This is the mystical dimension of Proverbs 13,25: צדיק אכל לשבע נפשו, "The righteous eats in order to satisfy his soul" [as opposed to his body. Ed.]. ועצמותיהם יגרם, "and he crushes their bones." Bileam means that Israel crushes even the strongest parts of its opponents.

2וחציו ימחע, "and smashes their arrows." We may best understand this by referring to Tanchuma Beshalach 15 where Isaiah 24,21 is explained. The author of the Midrash understands the words יפקד ה׳ על צבא המרום במרום that G'd does not annihilate the army of a nation in the terrestrial world until after He has vanquished that nation's "protector" in the celestial spheres. If the nation is only "weakened" and not destroyed in battle on earth, this is a sign that its שר, "protector or representative" at the celestial court has not been vanquished. G'd only humbled such a representative prior to this representative's "client" on earth suffering a defeat. When a nation experiences what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, this meant that the celestial representatives of these kingdoms had been liquidated by G'd. Bileam refers to these celestial representatives of the various nations as "their arrows", the ones who carry on the fight on behalf of their clients in the celestial spheres. The word ימחץ may be understood as similar to Psalms 110,6: מחץ ראשו על ארץ רבה, "He crushed its head in the land which is "great" i.e. in the celestial spheres." It is a reference to the "protectors" of these various nations being vanquished. If we were to understand the word מחץ as meaning immersion or washing, then Bileam alludes to all these arrows as having been soaked in the blood of the enemies of the Jewish people.