Last year, while in quarantine, I was reading through the book of Numbers when I noticed something weird: God gets mad at a prophet for obeying him. At least, that’s how it appears at first glance. But I read the rest of the book, and some details stood out to me, details that made the weird bits make more sense. Today, I’d like to share what I learned with you. The story starts in chapter 22. Balak, the king of the Moabites, has a problem. A powerful nomadic nation has set up camp across the river Jordan, one too powerful for Balak’s armies to defeat. Two neighboring kings— Sihon of the Ammonites and Og of Bashan— have already attacked them, only to be destroyed. So Balak seeks out supernatural aid. There’s a prophet nearby, Balaam, who has a track record of successful curses. A good, solid curse— that’s what Balak needs to stop the Israelite threat once and for all. He sends messengers to Balaam, loaded with gold and silver to pay the prophet for his services. But Balaam— having been warned by God not to take the job— refuses. So Balak ups his offer, saying “I will surely do you great honor, and whatever you say to me I will do. Come, curse this people for me” (Num. 22:17). Balaam considers, and this time, he gets a new message from God: “If the men have come to call you, rise, go with them; but only do what I tell you.” This is where it gets weird. Because here’s the next thing the Bible tells us: “Balaam rose in the morning and saddled his donkey and went with the princes of Moab. But God’s anger was kindled because he went” (22:21-22, emphasis added). Let’s review: 1) God tells Balaam to go 2) Balaam goes 3) God is angry What?!? A look at the broader context of this passage reveals Balaam’s motivation and helps us understand God’s displeasure. Remember, God didn’t just tell Balaam to go— he also gave specific instructions to “only do what I tell you.” As later becomes clear, Balaam has a lot more in mind than simply following God’s instructions. He thinks he knows how God works, and he’s hatching a nefarious plan to remove God’s favor from the Israelites. But before we explore that, we get to look at the most famous part of this story: the talking donkey. Three times the angel of the Lord blocks Balaam’s path as he travels, and three times his donkey proves more perceptive than her master. Each time she turns from the road to avoid the angel, Balaam grows angry and hits her. The third time, she talks. “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” (22:28). Balaam, interestingly, responds as if conversing with his donkey were the most normal thing in the world: “Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.” Now something really unusual happens. The donkey reasons. She offers a calm, rational response that shows Balaam how foolish he is: “Am I not your donkey, which you have ridden all you life long to this day? Is it my habit to treat you this way?” The donkey asks her rider to why she might be behaving differently than she has in the past. What it is about this journey that makes it different from all the other journeys they’ve been on together? In becoming angry with his steed, what truth has Balaam missed? Balaam, perhaps chastened, answers with a simple “No.” Then, at last, he sees the angel of the Lord, and realizes the truth— his life was in grave danger, and he was only saved because the donkey proved smarter than he was. “Why have you struck your donkey these three times?” asks the angel of the Lord. “I have come out to oppose you, because your way is perverse before me. If she had not turned aside from me, surely just now I would have killed you and let her live” (22:32-33). God uses the donkey to steer Balaam toward repentance. By undermining one of his basic assumptions (that he knows better than his animal), God gives him a chance to review his other basic assumptions— assumptions about the character of God. Assumptions about the “perverse way” that he plans to ally with the king of Moab. Balaam has plans that are far astray from anything God ever intended, and here he receives an opportunity to rethink them. Again God repeats his earlier warning: “Go with the men, but speak only the word that I tell you.” At first, Balaam seems to heed this warning. Three times, Balak asks him to curse the Israelites, and three times Balaam blesses them instead. Each time he reminds Balak— “All that Lord says, that I must do” (23:26). After his third blessing, the Bible tells us that “Balak’s anger was kindled against Balaam, and he struck his hands together. And Balak said to Balaam, ‘I called you to curse my enemies, and behold, you have blessed them these three times. Therefore now flee to your own place” (24:10-11). But before Balaam can run away from the angry king, he must deliver one more message, a prophecy predicting Israel’s ultimate triumph over Moab. The Bible doesn’t detail Balak’s reaction, but my guess is that if he was angry before, he’s absolutely livid now. Imagine you’ve hired a plumber to fix your sink. Not only does he break all the pipes, he also tells you that your septic tank is going to explode and spew human waste all over your house. Yeah... that’s pretty much what just happened with Balaam. But wait— perhaps Balak threatens Balaam, or perhaps the prophet wants another shot at all that honor and wealth the king promised. Either way, Balaam hasn’t given up on the job of cursing the Israelites. He ignores God’s warning. And he puts his nefarious plan into action. The Biblical narrative shifts abruptly, leaving behind Balak and Balaam to focus on the Israelites. Turns out they’re not doing so well at listening to God either. “The people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor” (25:1-3). This is a fundamental failure on the part of the Israelites to be who God called them to be. The image of Israel’s yoke is one of bondage. The Israelite’s sexual immorality and idolatry has returned them to the state of slavery, as they were in Egypt before God called them. What exactly is going on here? And why does this story follow directly on the heels of Balaam’s failed curse attempts? The answer becomes clear in chapter 31, when the identity of the one who sent the ‘daughters of Moab’ is revealed. “Moses said to them, ‘Have you let these women live? Behold, these, on Balaam’s advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the Lord in the incident of Peor” (31:15-16, emphasis added). Balaam recognizes that he can never drive God away from Israel. That as long as God’s favor rests upon them, the Israelites will defeat the Moabites in every battle they fight. And God will never leave his people. But... I imagine him whispering in Balak’s ear after the failed cursing... but, if he can get the Israelites to leave their God... And so he sends in women with orders to seduce. This seems the most likely explanation for why the angel of the Lord called his way “perverse”— he had this scheme in mind from the very beginning. Balaam has an accurate understanding of God’s power. But he completely fails to grasp God’s love. The scheme anticipates that God will no longer aid the Israelites once they start worshipping other Gods, thus leaving them open to a Moabite attack. But that’s not what happens at all. God doesn’t abandon them to be attacked by the Moabites. Instead, he attacks them himself. In their idolatry and sexual immorality, the Israelites have brought a terrible spiritual sickness upon themselves, one they’re unable to recognize. To open their eyes, God links their sin to a physical sickness, one that kills twenty-four thousand of them (25:9). God raises up Phinehas, the zealous priest who purges evildoers from the tent of meeting and makes “atonement for the people of Israel” (25:13). He strikes down those among the Israelites who align themselves with the false gods, thus bringing an end to the plague. God attacks the Israelites, not to utterly destroy them, but to bring about repentance and restoration. He pours out fierce anger, but not forever. The Israelites repent of their sin and are God’s people once more. Balaam’s plan fails because he never accounted for God’s love. In the end, Balaam causes the very outcome he was hired to prevent. With Phinehas at their head, the Israelites attack the Midianites in order to avenge their deception. Balaam himself is among those killed in the conflict (25:16-18, 31:8). Thousands of years later, Jesus would utter some words that summarize the warning Balaam ignored: “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to him through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin” (Luke 17:1-2). Because God loves his people, he wants to free them from sin. And his love can never be stopped— so anyone who tries to interfere with a believer’s struggle to become righteous is bound to be defeated. That’s one lesson I drew from the book of Numbers last year— that, and the lesson that donkeys are sometimes smarter than people.
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