Balaam

Scripture: Numbers 22-24; Numbers 25:1-9; Numbers 31:8, 16; Deuteronomy 23:4-5; Joshua 24:9-10; 2 Peter 2:15; Jude 11; Revelation 2:14; Micah 6:5

Balaam son of Beor was a diviner from Pethor in Mesopotamia (Numbers 22:5), not an Israelite, not a worshiper of YHWH in any normal sense, yet a man to whom YHWH spoke directly and whose oracles carry the word of YHWH. The kings of Moab and Midian, terrified by Israel's advance after the Exodus, sent a delegation with fees for divination: "Come now, curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed" (Numbers 22:6). YHWH told Balaam that night: "You shall not go with them. You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed" (22:12). Balaam turned the delegation away.

Balak sent more honorable princes with a better offer. YHWH told Balaam he could go, but only say what YHWH would put in his mouth. He saddled his donkey and went. Then: "YHWH's anger was kindled because he went" (22:22). The Angel of YHWH stood in the road with a drawn sword. The donkey saw it and turned off the road into a field. Balaam struck the donkey. The Angel moved to a narrow path between vineyard walls; the donkey pressed against the wall and crushed Balaam's foot. He struck her again. Then the Angel stood in a still narrower place with no room to turn. The donkey lay down. Balaam was angry and struck her a third time.

Then YHWH opened the mouth of the donkey: "What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?" (22:28). Balaam answered the donkey as though the conversation were ordinary: "Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you." The donkey: "Am I not your donkey, on which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Is it my habit to treat you this way?" He said: "No." Then YHWH opened Balaam's eyes. He saw the Angel of YHWH standing in the road with a drawn sword and fell on his face. The Angel told him: "Your way is perverse before me... the donkey saw me and turned aside before me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, surely just now I would have killed you and let her live" (22:32-33). The man who could see what kings could not see had been blind to what his donkey saw. He was permitted to continue, but only to say what YHWH commanded.

Balak met him and took him to the high places of Baal. Seven altars. Seven bulls. Seven rams. Three times Balak arranged the platform for cursing, and three times YHWH put only blessing in Balaam's mouth (Numbers 23-24). The first oracle: "How can I curse whom God has not cursed?" (23:8). The second: "God is not man, that he should lie... Has he said, and will he not do it?" (23:19). Balak's fury mounted with each blessing. The third oracle was delivered with no additional altars, the Spirit of God came upon Balaam and he saw the vision of the Almighty, "falling down with his eyes uncovered" (24:4). The fourth oracle declared: "I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel" (24:17). The star-oracle became a prophecy the Magi were following when they arrived in Jerusalem in Matthew 2. Balaam's subsequent oracles surveyed the nations of the ancient world, Amalek, the Kenites, the ships of Kittim, before he rose and returned to his place.

But the record does not end with the oracles. Numbers 31:16 reveals that Balaam had advised the Midianite women on how to harm Israel when he could not curse them directly: he counseled them to seduce Israel into the worship of Baal of Peor (Numbers 25), an episode of sexual immorality and idolatry that YHWH judged with a plague killing twenty-four thousand, stopped only when Phinehas drove a spear through an Israelite man and a Midianite woman together (25:7-8). Balaam found the path around the prohibition. He could not curse; he could corrupt. In the subsequent battle against Midian he was killed with the sword (Numbers 31:8). The New Testament reads his legacy through that second act: "They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing" (2 Peter 2:15). Jude 11: "they abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error." Revelation 2:14: "you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel." He becomes the archetype of the prophet for hire, the teacher whose gift is real and whose corruption is also real, who speaks YHWH's word and then sells the workaround.

In the Sanctum, Balaam holds a position without parallel, a non-Israelite diviner who was made to speak the word of YHWH four times, who prophesied the star of Jacob that the Magi followed, and who then advised the destruction of the people he had blessed. The Sanctum does not resolve the tension: the oracle of Numbers 24 is Scripture. The teaching of Revelation 2:14 is also Scripture. Both are true of the same man, and both are in the record.