Balaam and his donkey! My favorite story in Numbers! Definitely one of my Top 10, if not Top 5 stories of the Old Testament all together. This stuff is great! I admit, I was excited to get to read this again.
On rereading, however, Balaam proved to be a bit of an enigma for me at first. It's clear he's been granted some power, or at least some insight, as he has a reputation that whatever he curses or blesses proves to be true (v. 6), which is why Balak summoned him to Moab. Also, he inquires of the Lord before he sets out on his journey, twice. This doesn't speak to me of the man I thought Balaam was. After all, this is the guy who stubbornly refuses to recognize there's something going on with his donkey, and so beats her out of his own blindness; who is so determined to curse a people that he has to bless them three times instead to get the message through his head! Surely, a guy who has blessings that stick and who goes before the Lord, refusing to take a job without the Lord's permission, wouldn't be that dense, right? Couple that with the fact that the Lord actually gave him permission to go (conditional, granted) and then was angry with him for doing so, and I found myself reading a story I didn't know very well. None of it was making sense!
I read up in some commentaries, and I had to remember: let Scripture teach Scripture. See, in 1 Peter 2:15, Peter explains that Balaam wasn't going out of the purest of intents or going because he'd been commanded to go. Instead, we see that Balaam loved gain from wrongdoing: he was being greedy with the promises of these rich princes come to collect him for Balak. God, who knows the hearts of men, understood that Balaam was simply looking for permission to go and to gain money. Clearly, he loved money: the whole story smacks of it. He already knew the Lord didn't want him to curse these people as they were already blessed by God, but he asked for permission again, just in case. God knew in his heart that Balaam went for gain. He was, after all, selling his services as a prophet, or at best a medium between God and man. He was using his access with the Lord to make money, and this job was "surely no different." But it was. Perhaps Balaam had started out with a pure heart, but as he was blessed by the Lord with truth and accuracy, it seems he may have grown his reputation for his own personal gain.
Further case in point: Balaam may not have been as close to the Lord as it seemed at first. After all, it wasn't Balaam who saw the angel, but his donkey. And rather than confront the angel, despite beatings, the donkey tried to swerve aside or stop, even stop Balaam from continuing. Balaam, who had been riding this donkey for years, knew her temperament, should have known at once that something was amiss, was so focused on his goal that he didn't consider the implications. The Lord had to open her mouth to speak as a human in order to get his attention! Surely, a true prophet would have been sensitive to divine intervention, right? (I would like to think Jeremiah or Isaiah or Joel or Haggai would have, but I cannot really judge: I wasn't there.) However, when Balaam sees the angel, and hears how his donkey's behavior has saved his life, he readily acknowledges he is a sinner, and he understands that now God does indeed intend for him to go to Balak, but with God's own purposes in mind, neither Balak's nor Balaam's.
That, we get to see tomorrow. :)
Tomorrow's Reading: Numbers 23:1-24:14
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