May 11, 2007
And the Donkey Said…
Numbers 22-25
The story in front of us today (Numbers 22-25) is one of the oddest, one of the most intriguing and one of the most puzzling stories in the Bible. Permit me to give a brief summary.
As Israel approaches the borders of the Promised Land from the east, the surrounding nations become increasingly frightened. This fear is heightened by some dramatic military victories described in the second half of Numbers 21. Two of the threatened nations, Moab and Midian, decide to take action. The action they take is not military but spiritual. They send messengers to hire a famous “holy man” by the name of Balaam to place a curse on the Israelites.
The story unfolds from there. On the first visit, Balaam asks God if he should go and God tells him “No!” So Balaam refuses to go. The messengers come again and offer an even bigger fee. This time when Balaam asks God, he is given permission to go. But on the journey we are told that God is angry with Balaam. The angel of the Lord appears in the path in front of Balaam, brandishing a sword. Balaam can’t see the angel, but the donkey he is riding can! The donkey shies away in fright and runs into a field. Balaam beats her until she returns to the path. The angel next stands in their way between two vineyard walls. This time when the donkey spooks, she crushes Balaam’s foot against one of the walls. Furious, Balaam beats her again. The next time the angel appears in a narrow part of the path. There is no room to turn right or left. So the donkey simply lies down in the path. This time Balaam takes his staff and begins to beat her with it.
That is when the story takes a completely unexpected turn. We are told that the Lord gives the donkey the ability to speak. She turns to Balaam and asks, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?” Oddly enough, Balaam doesn’t seem too startled to hear his donkey speak! He says, “You have made a fool of me. You’re lucky I only have a staff to beat you with. If I had a sword I’d kill you right now!”
The donkey then protests further. “I am your own donkey. You’ve always ridden me. Have I ever behaved this way before?” Balaam admits that she has not. And at that moment, God opens Balaam’s eyes and he is able to see what the donkey has seen all along; the angel of the Lord standing in front of him with his sword drawn. The angel rebukes Balaam for his cruelty to his donkey, pointing out that she has actually saved his life. He then warns Balaam that he is on a dangerous path, but allows him to continue with the stern injunction that he is only to speak the words that God gives him to speak.
When Balaam arrives at his destination, elaborate measures are prepared for him to pronounce the words of cursing over the nation of Israel that he has been hired to deliver. Sacrifices are offered and divining rituals are carried out. Balaam opens his mouth to speak. Only to his own and to King Balak’s horror, what comes out of his mouth are words of blessing! (Read Numbers 23:7-11)
And so it continues over the next two chapters. Balak tells him to curse the Israelites. And whenever Balaam opens his mouth to do so, out come words of beautiful prophecy – prophecies of blessing on Israel and cursing on her enemies! When Balak asks Balaam, “What are you doing?” Balaam responds, “I can’t help it! I can only speak what Yahweh, the God of Israel allows me to speak!”
As I said, this is a puzzling story on several levels. The first and most puzzling question is, who is Balaam? He is a hard character to get a handle on and the text itself seems to give off conflicting clues. As a result, he provokes a considerable amount of debate among Bible scholars. One thing is very clear. Balaam is mentioned by name 10 times in subsequent Scriptures, including three references in the New Testament. Every one of those references is negative and casts him in a bad light as an enemy of Israel and as a prototypical false prophet and false teacher. So what do we make of his role in these chapters? It seems to me that there are several possible answers to that question.
According to this viewpoint, Balaam was a prophet of the true God. We don’t know his spiritual pedigree or how he was appointed by God, but somehow he knows the true God and is accustomed to being his spokesman. Several verses in the text seem to lead us in this direction. In Numbers 22:18 he says to the king’s servants, “Even if Balak gives me his palace filled with silver and gold, I could not do anything great or small to go beyond the command of Yahweh my God.” That last phrase especially (Yahweh, my God) would seem to indicate that Balaam was a sincere prophet. He knows God by his special name. He identifies him as his own God. What is more, Numbers 24:2 clearly states that “the Spirit of God came upon him.” So he was a sincere prophet of the true God. But somehow over time he became corrupted by the profit motive. He rented his services out to the highest bidder. So by the time we meet him, he is a badly conflicted and confused character.
This would explain his statements of “speaking only what Yahweh puts in my mouth,” and even the reference to “Yahweh my God.” But when the story is fully told, he turns back to his pagan roots and continues on his corrupt and evil path.
There was a category of soothsayers or mediums in the ancient world who made their living by virtue of their ability to make contact with the spiritual forces of the universe and provide information about the future or even were able to influence the future by means of spiritual curses or blessings that activated the forces of the spiritual world either for or against their clients. One particular type of soothsayer particularly relied on animals. They would slaughter them and examine their liver and entrails for divining purposes.
Such prophets were extremely syncretistic. They did not serve any particular god or gods, but simply attempted to use and influence any and all spiritual forces for their own advantage. According to this viewpoint, then, Balaam had no personal loyalty to Yahweh. He only knew him as Israel’s tribal god, and sought to contact and manipulate him against his own people. But he got more than he bargained for! His desire and ability to cast spells and pronounce curses against Israel is simply overwhelmed by God’s sovereign power. So when he says to Balak, “I can only speak the words that Yahweh places in my mouth,” he is speaking as one who has been coerced against his will. He wants to say one thing, but he is not permitted to. He has fallen unwillingly under the influence of the Spirit of God. He is captured by a spiritual force more powerful than anything he has ever felt. He has no choice but to speak the words God wants him to speak.
This final viewpoint is the one proposed by my Hebrew professor in seminary, Dr. Ron Allen. He wrote his doctrinal dissertation on the Balaam oracles. His arguments are strong. I think I am convinced. Of the three possibilities it seems the best. But I must admit that Numbers 22:18, where Balaam refers to the command of Yahweh my God, still sits rather uneasily in the back of my mind.
I guess that leads me to propose a fourth possibility.
My dictionary defines an enigma as “an inscrutable or mysterious person.” And after all my study, I must admit that remains about the best description I have for Balaam.
That leads me to the second question posed by the story. Why the donkey? This is only one of two instances in the Bible in which animals are recorded as speaking. The other is the serpent in the Garden of Eden. But why the donkey in this story? The role of the donkey adds a great deal to the story on several levels. The first is humor. This is a very memorable and funny story, primarily because of the donkey. The story goes into great detail about each of the incidents in which the donkey sees the angel with sword drawn, and veers aside. We can easily picture the exasperated Balaam beating on the poor animal. Then the surprise factor when the longsuffering beast turns and speaks to him: “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?”
This is great comedy. But even more than that, it is humor laced heavily with irony. Think about it. Balaam is a man who prides himself on two things. He prides himself on being able to see and understand matters in the spiritual realm that others cannot see. One of the names for such a man is “seer”, one who sees into the mysteries of the unseen world. The other thing he prides himself in is his ability to speak and reveal these mysteries to others, to be a spokesperson for the gods. But in the story, guess what! The donkey, an animal universally reviled for its foolishness, sees the angel while Balaam remains oblivious to his presence. The donkey sees! Balaam is blind! And when God finally decides to get Balaam’s attention, he does so by giving the donkey, not Balaam, the ability to speak! Talk about a humiliating lesson for Balaam! It is as if God were saying to this proud prophet, “Listen, Balaam. If I want to reveal myself to someone, I can do it to this dumb animal more easily than I can to you. And if I need someone to speak for me, if I choose, I can speak through this donkey. This story clearly puts Balaam and all his company firmly in their place, and we can almost hear the gales of laughter sweeping out of heaven.
The third thing the incident of the donkey provides to the story is the clear truth that God has the power to speak through anyone or anything he chooses. His power is not limited. He is not bound by human limitations or human categories or expectations. When this story is done, we end up marveling that God has spoken so clearly and powerfully through this man Balaam. But by this incident of the donkey God says to us, “Listen, I could have used a donkey if I’d wanted to. When I choose to speak, I will speak and no one can stop me.”
That brings us to the third and most important question I want us to consider. What is the point of this whole story of Balaam? Why is it recorded in our Scriptures?
There is a very serious and important spiritual point to this account and some important spiritual lessons for the nation of Israel. As they prepared to enter the Promised Land, they would face many physical challenges and threats; walled cities, giants, large armies. But they were also entering new territory spiritually. Each of these cities and nations had gods; deities that they depended on to protect them and to fight for them. In the Balaam oracles and the whole Balaam story, God clearly declares to Israel that they have nothing to fear from the spiritual forces that inhabited the land if they put their trust in him.
We will not take the time to read or analyze each of the seven different oracles of Balaam that are recorded in these pages. But I want to pick out three lines of truth each related to
Israel’s security.
(Read Numbers 23:7-10, 20-23, 24:9b)
What God has ordained will come to pass. No man and no other spiritual powers can change what he has decreed. There was no curse that could be effective against Israel because God had determined to bless them. The nation was secure in God’s sovereign power and in his protection. They had nothing to fear from the peoples of the land or from their gods.
(Read Numbers 23: 18-19)
The previous point affirms that there is no power outside of God that can deter his sovereign purpose. This point states that there is no changeableness within God to cause him to turn from his purpose or break his promise. He does not change his mind. He has promised to bring his people into the land. And he will keep his promise.
(Read Numbers 24:17-19)
Isn’t this an amazing thing? That the clearest promise of the coming Messiah so far recorded should come from the mouth of this pagan prophet? I am not sure why God chose to deliver his message in this way. But regardless of the mouthpiece, God’s promise is perfectly clear and it is a promise of great hope. A great king is coming; a star, a scepter, a ruler will come out of Jacob. Not now, not near. But when the time is ripe he will come. Wait for him. And when he comes, trust in him. He will deliver you from all your enemies. It is one of the many promises of Messiah that are sprinkled throughout the Old Testament Scriptures. This one is found in the most unlikely of places, but it sparkles all the more brightly because of that.
Sadly, we have not quite finished with the story of Balaam. Numbers 25 goes on to record another sad chapter in Israel’s history. Camped on the edge of the Promised Land, the men of Israel began to strike up liaisons with some of the Moabite women. Verse 1 says, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women. But there was more involved here than sexual immorality. Verse 2 tells us these women invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate and bowed down before these gods. So Israel joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor. The worship of Baal involved acts of immorality as part of their worship to the bull god of fertility. The story goes on to tell how God’s wrath broke out against them in a plague which was only stopped by a dramatic act on the part of Phinehas the priest. When a particularly brazen couple brought their pagan revelry right into the vicinity of the temple itself, Phinehas speared the couple through with a single thrust of a spear, and his act of righteous indignation brought an end to the people’s sin and to the plague.
You say, but what does this have to do with the story of Balaam? Well, it’s not mentioned in Numbers 25, but if you turn over to Numbers 31:7-8. They fought against Midian as the Lord commanded Moses and killed every man. Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba – the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. But even more significant than that, look at verse 31: These were(the women) who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. The book of Revelation spells it out even more clearly in Revelation 2:14: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality.
Balaam may have been dumber than a donkey, but he was also as shrewd as a serpent! What he could not accomplish by direct frontal attack, he accomplished by deceit. He tried as hard as he could to curse the Israelites. But when God thwarted him, he gave Balak an alternative strategy. Entice them! Seduce them! Turn their hearts away from Yahweh, the true God. Sadly, this strategy found willing collaborators within the camp of Israel. Truly Israel’s greatest threat lay not from outside, from opposing armies or even the “power” of opposing deities, but from within, the sin that lay in their own hearts and which was so easily aroused.
These lessons explain why this story is important and why it was recorded in the sacred record of Israel’s history. I believe these lessons are relevant for us today and worth our taking time to meditate on.
Our protection rests in the sovereign blessing of God. There is no power greater than his power. There is no curse, no spell, no evil spiritual forces which can penetrate the protection that God has placed around us as his children. Listen to the words of the pagan prophet: God has blessed and I cannot change it…The Lord their God is with them… There is no sorcery against Jacob, no divination against Jacob. We rest secure in his protection no matter what the spiritual forces that may be arrayed against us. As Paul says in Romans 8, If God is for us, who can be against us?
Our security rests in the changeless character of God. He does not change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?
Our hope rests in the Promised Redeemer. Only what the Israelites looked forward to in expectation, we now look back on. The Redeemer has come. He came to set us free from our sin and from death. And he is coming again, to reign and rule over all creation. Our hope is in him.
And finally, be alert. Like the Israelites, our greatest vulnerability is not from without but from within. This is true individually. It is our own sinful impulses and fleshly desire that the evil one will exploit to lead our hearts away from the Lord. But it is also true corporately. What the evil one cannot accomplish by attacking God’s people directly, he will often accomplish by infiltrating our ranks and causing sin to spread insidiously, member to member; sins of pride, of compromise, of dissension. Let us guard our own hearts for that is where our greatest danger lies!