The Politician and the Donkey

Listening to the 2004 debates between the candidates for President of the United States of America was a fascinating experience. In each debate there were questions from the moderator to each candidate in turn, and each candidate had a chance to rebut the answers of the other man. In order to understand the positions of the presidential hopefuls, though, it was never enough simply to listen to what they said. You always had to be careful to notice what they didn’t say as well. In some cases the answer given by the candidate bore little or no relationship to the question he had been asked. In other cases the candidates answered part of the question but left another key aspect deliberately unmentioned. The casual listener might be moved by impressive sound bites or by the outward demeanor of the candidates, but the person wishing to understand their respective political platforms fully had to listen very carefully to the silences as well as to the words.

Numbers 22 has a lot in common with these political debates. The superficial reader, whose attention is focused on sound bites and the surprising appearance of a talking donkey, may easily miss the point and end up confused by this narrative. Is Balaam the hero or villain in this story? Is he a sinner or a saint? Why did God tell Balaam to go with Balak’s envoys (v. 20) and then get angry with him when he did just that (v. 22)? Did God suddenly and inexplicably change his mind? Or were there valid reasons for his anger? The key to understanding this story is to recognize that Balaam was a politician as well as a prophet, a man who made a living from his words. Such people do not always say what they mean or mean what they say. The speeches of people like Balaam need to be analyzed closely to hear what they do not say as well as what they do say. When you do that, the narrative springs to life with a whole new level of clarity.


IN SEARCH OF A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

The story begins with Balak, King of Moab, looking across his border in terror at the reality of the Israelites as new neighbors (vv. 2, 3). Given what the Israelites had done in the previous chapter to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites and Bashan respectively, this was perhaps not a surprising response. The idea of a conventional war against the Israelites seemed to have little prospect of success because of their vast numbers, and the thought of seeking a peaceful settlement with this new political reality apparently didn’t arise. What Balak and the Moabites wanted was a nonconventional war involving a weapon of mass destruction that would debilitate the Israelites, enabling the Moabites to be victorious over them. In the ancient world there was only one such weapon of mass destruction: a curse from the gods that would decisively tip the balance of power against your enemies.

It was in search of just such a curse that Balak sought out Balaam, a man with an international reputation for dealing in such weaponry. Balak sent messengers to summon Balaam to curse Israel, so Balak could defeat them in battle and drive them away, saying, “I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed” (vv. 5, 6). At this point, the battle lines were clearly drawn, for in Genesis 12:2, 3 the Lord had already declared to Abram:

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

By summoning Balaam to curse Israel, Balak had set himself against the Lord and the Lord’s people, and therefore he was under a curse of his own. Which curse would win out—the pagan prophet’s or the Lord’s?


LISTENING TO THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

The elders of Moab, along with their allies from Midian, went to Balaam carrying Balak’s message and the down payment on the proposed divination contract (v. 7). Balaam responded by asking them to spend the night with him while he sought the direction of “the LORD” on the matter (v. 8). Now this is certainly a striking and surprising twist in the story: Balaam used the personal name of Israel’s God (Yahweh) as the one from whom he would seek direction. It raises the concern that if Balaam were able to consult the Lord, perhaps he could change the Lord’s mind from blessing to curse. Perhaps he had enough standing with his master to receive what he requested. Yet one shouldn’t jump too quickly from Balaam’s words to the conclusion that Balaam was an orthodox follower of the Lord. Like all politicians, Balaam was quite capable of playing the “God” card when and how it suited him to do so. He obviously knew who the Lord was and apparently received messages from him, but exactly what his relationship to the Lord was has yet to be made clear. In a narrative in which a donkey also sees the Lord and speaks his words, the ability to prophesy truthfully in the Lord’s name should not by itself be rated too highly.

Sure enough, the Lord appeared to Balaam in the night and asked him, “Who are these men with you?” (v. 9). On the face of it, that is a simple question, but why did God ask it? He certainly didn’t need the information from Balaam since he already knows all things. In the Bible God typically asks questions not for his own benefit but for the benefit of his hearers. When God said to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Genesis 3:11), he was giving Adam an opportunity to confess his sins. When the Lord asked Isaiah, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8), he wasn’t expressing personal uncertainty; he was giving Isaiah the opportunity to volunteer for the mission. So too when the Lord said to Balaam, “Who are these men?” he wanted Balaam to reflect on who would be giving him his orders if he accepted their commission. What authority did they have to summon him, and what power did they have to reward him? These were not gods who had come to him—they were mere men.

Balaam responded to the Lord’s inquiry with a carefully edited version of Balak’s message (compare v. 11 with vv. 5, 6). What he left out in his presentation to the Lord was profoundly significant. Balaam omitted the fact that Israel had settled next to Balak but had not attacked him and that Balak’s action therefore could not be construed as justified self-defense. He also left out Balak’s flattering assertion that Balaam had the power to bless and to curse effectively. In contrast to this dissimulation on Balaam’s part, the Lord’s answer was definitive and clear: “You shall not go with them. You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed” (v. 12). The promise of Genesis 12 was explicitly still in force. The Lord had declared his will clearly and unequivocally to Balaam.


CONFUSING SIGNALS

In the morning Balaam took this message from the Lord and conveyed it to the envoys of Balak—once again in carefully edited form. What he said to them was simply, “Go to your own land, for the LORD has refused to let me go with you” (v. 13). There was no mention of the fact that he was unable to curse Israel because the Lord had decreed definitively that they were blessed, nor was there evidence of any reluctance on his own part to do their bidding. In fact, if they listened carefully, they would hear quite the contrary. When my son tells one of his playmates that his dad says he can’t come out to play until his homework is finished, he makes it evident that he would very much like to go with them but is presently being detained against his will. So too when Balaam said that the Lord had refused to let him come with them, he clearly implied that he personally would have loved to be able to oblige Balak if only the circumstances had been different.

By the time the envoys returned home to tell Balak the news, the process was beginning to resemble a game of Telephone, in which children whisper a message from one to the next down a line. In that game, the message that emerges at the far end is often quite different from the message that started out. So too here the message that Balak received was quite different from the one that the Lord sent. Far from being told that Balaam could not curse this people because the Lord had declared them to be blessed, he heard from his envoys only that Balaam had refused to come (v. 14). Not unnaturally, Balak read this as a mere negotiating ploy on Balaam’s part and responded by sweetening the pot. Balak promised to honor him greatly (i.e., reward him substantially) if he would only come and curse this people (vv. 16, 17). Nothing (and no one) should therefore prevent him from coming. Balak backed up his improved offer by sending a higher-ranking delegation of envoys to convey it to Balaam (v. 15).

When the more distinguished entourage of Moabites and Midianites arrived at Balaam’s home with this message, the prophet had to choose where his priorities lay. On the one hand, there was Balak, offering him honor and financial reward, while on the other there was the clear decree of the Lord: “You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed” (v. 12). Which path would he choose?

On the face of it, Balaam’s response to the messengers of Balak sounds wonderfully spiritual: “Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the LORD my God to do less or more” (v. 18). What a noble and self-sacrificial position he adopted! However, you mustn’t forget that Balaam was a politician, and words are cheap. Balaam promptly exposed the true feelings of his heart with the rest of the words that he spoke to the delegation: “So you, too, please stay here tonight, that I may know what more the LORD will say to me” (v. 19, emphasis added). If Balaam really meant the fine words he had just said about not doing anything great or small beyond the command of the Lord, there was no reason for him to invite Balak’s princes to stay. What part of “You shall not go with them” didn’t he understand? What did the Lord need to add to “You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed”? Inviting the men to stay the night showed that Balaam still hoped the Lord would change his mind or that he might yet find some other way to claim the bounty offered by Balak. For all his wonderful words, Balaam couldn’t let the prospect of Balak’s gold escape without a fight.

What was the Lord’s response to Balaam’s request? “If the men have come to call you, rise, go with them; but only do what I tell you” (v. 20). Many commentators fail to notice that this is not a direct command to go to Moab. And it is not the exact opposite of the previous command to remain at home. Rather, it is a conditional sentence: “If the men have come to call you … go.”8 Clearly the condition in the clause has been met: the men have, in fact, come to summon him. So what is the point of including the condition here? The answer is that by putting the focus on the men, it brings to the foreground the same issue as was posed by the Lord’s original question: “Who are these men?” That is, what authority did they have to summon him? In other words, the Lord was saying to Balaam, “If the summons of men and the glory (reward) that they offer is really so important to you that it outweighs the expressed command of God, then you may go with them.” This is the equivalent of Joshua’s challenge to Israel to choose whom they would serve, whether the gods of their fathers or the gods of the Amorites or the Lord (Joshua 24:15). Balaam had to make a decision whether to go with the men and follow his idolatry or stay home and follow the Lord. Yet even his freedom to follow his own gods was limited. He was only free until he reached the end of a short leash, for even if he went with Balak’s men, he could do nothing other than what the Lord told him.


ANOTHER KEY SILENCE

At this point there was another crucial omission on Balaam’s part. In verse 13, after the Lord had spoken to him the first time, we read, “So Balaam rose in the morning and said to the princes of Balak …” He then recounted the substance of the Lord’s words to him. On this second occasion, in verse 21, the scene opens in exactly the same way: “So Balaam rose in the morning …” But from there onward the events diverged. What Balaam did not do this time was to get up in the morning and tell the princes of Balak what the Lord had said. He didn’t say to them, “Look, I can come with you if you want, but I can only say what the Lord says—and he has already made it clear that Israel is blessed and not cursed.” Instead, Balaam went with them in haste and without any explicit clarification of what had transpired overnight, presumably giving the envoys the impression that he had straightened out the difficulties with the Lord and was now all set to earn his substantial fees by cursing Israel.

Once that key omission is observed, it is simple to explain why, having given Balaam permission to go to Moab in verse 20, the Lord was so angry with him in verse 22. The Lord was angry not simply because Balaam had gone with Balak’s messengers but rather because he had gone in a way that evidenced a lack of submission to the Lord. He acted as if he were a free agent, able to control his own destiny as well as that of other nations. The Lord therefore determined that it was necessary to teach Balaam a lesson about who was in control of his life, whether he liked it or not. He needed to learn that though man may propose, God is still the one who disposes.


DIVIDED HEARTS

We have much in common with Balaam. One challenge that the story clearly faces us with is the question of who is pulling our strings. Faced with a choice between obeying the clear command of God and pursuing Balak’s house full of silver and gold, the silver and gold triumphed in Balaam’s heart, for all his protestations to the contrary. His besetting sin was greed, as Peter rightly diagnosed it (see 2 Peter 2:15). As a result, he went to Moab with the envoys of Balak instead of sending them on their way with the clear word of the Lord. The Lord gave him over, up to a point, to his sinful choices. Are we so very different from Balaam though? To what extent do the very same things that Balak offered Balaam—money and prestige—have a grip on our hearts? Are we ourselves free from the love of money, which Paul describes as the root of all evils (1 Timothy 6:10)? If these precise things do not hold our hearts captive, perhaps other idols drive our thinking just as surely: acceptance, physical beauty, intellectual accomplishment, or the like.

In seeking to understand what drives us, it is important to recognize that the answer is often more evident in our actions than in our words. Just as Balaam’s attempt to extract a different response from the Lord exposed his divided heart and betrayed the emptiness of his words, so too our words and actions are often at odds. Like Balaam, we may piously commit ourselves to the Lord wholeheartedly on Sundays, while from Monday to Saturday our lives are driven by the summons of different masters. We may say, “We love the Lord, not money,” but our spending patterns in our checkbooks tell a different story. We declare, “We fear the Lord and not people,” yet our cowardly refusal to stand up for Christ in the office or the classroom reveals a different truth. The essence of integrity is someone whose words and thoughts and actions are thoroughly integrated: they are all aligned in the same direction. Are we such persons of integrity? Do our words and our actions line up with each other?

If not, then it is almost invariably the case that our actions expose the real truth about our hearts. Our actions make plain what else we must have apart from the Lord to make our lives meaningful and significant. It may be money or power or acceptance or comfort or a myriad of other things, but whenever obedience to the Lord’s Word means that our idol is challenged, we find ourselves drawn away from obedience in pursuit of our “what else.” No matter how orthodox and impressive our words are, they are not worth the breath expended in uttering them if there is no congruence between them and our deeds.


BALAAM AND THE DONKEY

Balaam’s lesson in humility took the form of the famous incident with his donkey. The angel of the Lord took up a position on the road in front of Balaam to oppose him, with drawn sword in hand (v. 23). It was a menacing sight, the import of which the donkey clearly understood. Three times the angel of the Lord stood in the way; three times the donkey refused to pass, in spite of Balaam’s increasingly insistent urgings. The first time, the donkey turned off the road, and Balaam beat her to get her back on track (v. 23). The second time, the angel barred the way on a narrow path between two walls. In order to avoid the angel, the donkey pressed up against the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot, causing him to beat her again (v. 25). On the third occasion, there was no way past the angel; so the donkey simply lay down in the road, refusing to stir even when he beat her with a stick (vv. 26, 27).

At this point the Lord opened the long-suffering animal’s mouth, enabling it to confront Balaam. She said, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” (v. 28). Balaam responded, “Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.” Then the donkey replied, “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?”
Let’s pause at this point and consider what is remarkable about this scene. It is not so much the fact that a donkey speaks: God created all of the animals, and he can cause any of them to do his bidding in any way he chooses. What is remarkable about this scene is Balaam’s blindness and impotence. Here is a man who is a professional seer, the kind of person who makes a living discerning messages from God in places where other people see only random tea leaves and miscellaneous flights of birds; yet he cannot see the angel of the Lord when he stands there in plain sight in front of him! His donkey can see the Lord’s messenger, but Balaam cannot. Moreover, here is a man who has been hired to travel some distance in order to harm an entire nation—Israel—with the mere power of his spoken word; yet when a simple donkey makes a fool out of him, he is reduced to beating her with a stick and uttering empty threats. He has no power to curse her by turning her into a frog or a pumpkin! The world famous super-prophet is both spiritually blind and unable to inflict harm, while a mere donkey whose mouth has been opened by the Lord is able to see the truth clearly and speak it out in a way that delivers from death. The scene forms a wonderfully humorous picture.

It was at this point that the Lord finally opened Balaam’s eyes to see the angel of the Lord standing in front of him with drawn sword (v. 31). The angel rebuked him for beating his donkey, whose actions had actually saved his life. Balaam’s reckless path in pursuing Balak’s gold instead of telling him the truth about the Lord’s purposes for Israel had put his own life in danger. Ironically, at the very same time that Balaam was threatening his donkey with death if he only had a sword in his hand, his own master had been standing over him with a drawn sword. Only the donkey’s faithfulness had saved him from death.

Now Balaam’s eyes were opened to see the folly of his ways. If he thought that his hitherto faithful donkey deserved death for its apparent perverseness in disregarding his commands, how much more must he himself deserve death for his own perverse pursuit of profit? After all, the donkey disobeyed him out of obedience to a higher authority, while his own disobedience was in pursuit of mere money. He stood condemned out of his own mouth. Balaam then confessed that he had sinned by going with the envoys of Balak, for he did not realize that the Lord was standing in the road to block his path. More precisely, the Hebrew says, “I did not realize you had taken a stand to summon me on the way” (v. 34). The verb used (qr’) is different from that used to describe the Lord’s purpose in verses 22 and 32, but it is the same verb that the Lord used in verse 20: “If the men have come to call you …” In other words, Balaam recognized at last that the issue here was precisely that of whose bidding Balaam was to do. In going to Moab, he had thought to obey the summons of Balak, but through the incident with the donkey, the Lord confronted him afresh with the reality of whose summons he had to obey. Like a mere donkey, Balaam’s part was not to be creative and pioneer his own path: rather, he was simply required to be an obedient medium for the Lord’s message.

Having made that point comprehensively to Balaam, there was now no need to turn him around and send him home. He could safely be sent on with his companions to Moab, with the injunction of the night vision once again ringing in his ears: “speak only the word that I tell you” (v. 35; see v. 20). It is striking that it was at this point in the story, after he arrived in Moab humbled after the incident with the donkey and reminded that he was not an independent agent, Balaam finally said the words to Balak that he earlier failed to say to his envoys. When Balak asked him why he did not come when the king summoned him (v. 37; the same Hebrew word as before) and said, “Am I not able to honor you?” Balaam replied, “Behold, I have come to you! Have I now any power of my own to speak anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that must I speak” (v. 38). By this point Balaam had, however reluctantly, learned his lesson. Balak had neither the authority to summon him nor the ability to reward him sufficiently to achieve what he wanted. Balaam may not have been happy about this turn of events, as the terseness of his reply to Balak perhaps makes evident, but he recognized that he was not a free agent in this matter. He could only say the words the Lord commanded him to say.


THE LORD’S DETERMINATION TO BLESS

The central lesson behind the story of Balaam is the Lord’s determination to bless his people. No hotshot prophet will be permitted to curse God’s people, no matter how much he wants to, because the Lord has declared them blessed. Instead, his very attempt to curse Israel will itself be turned into another blessing. Israel was most likely unaware of this whole episode at the time when it happened. This is probably just as well, since the news that an international wizard was on his way to place them under a curse might well have sent them into yet another frenzy of worry and grumbling. Yet even had they been aware of it, they need not have worried. The Lord would turn the curse that they feared into a blessing.

Isn’t that a lesson we need to internalize as well? There are many dangers in life of which we are not even aware because the Lord extracts their sting before they even reach us. In other cases, though, we become aware of the rise of threatening thunderclouds, triggering panic in our hearts. Something or someone seems poised to ruin our lives once and for all. We need not be so easily afraid. As William Cowper put it in his great hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”:

  Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
  The clouds ye so much dread
  Are big with mercy, and shall break
  In blessings on your head.

If the Lord has decreed our blessing, then nothing and no one can turn our blessing into a curse.

This reality is the answer to our sinful worries. Why do we fret about so many of life’s problems? As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, the reason we worry is because we have given in to the belief that God loves us less than he loves the birds of the air or the lilies of the field. They do not fret, yet they are constantly fed and clothed by the Lord (Matthew 6:26, 28)! Since we have far greater assurances of God’s care for us than any flower or bird ever received, why should we be so concerned about these things? Our worry reveals the fact that we are believing a lie about God, and the answer to our worry is therefore to remind ourselves afresh of the truth about his care for us.

This reality is also the answer to the various idols of our hearts that are continually pulling our strings. Why is it that we are driven by money or the prospect of power and fame? It is because we have begun to seek our blessing in these things. Why is it that we fear people and are so desperately afraid of being excluded from the in-crowd? It is because we are afraid of the curse with which they threaten us. Why is it that the desire for physical attractiveness or intellectual achievement or the need to have a perfect family holds us in its spell? It is because we have come to believe these idols hold sway over our destiny. We have started to believe that real meaning and significance in life is in the hand of our idol to give or to withhold. That is why we are so fearful and depressed, as well as why we are so driven and anxious. If you and I could learn to look to the Lord alone for our blessing and to find our confidence in his settled purpose to bless us, that would cut the strings that bind us under the power of all manner of other things. What peace and assurance would then be ours! If we could only be convinced of the Lord’s power and his purpose to bless us, the engine of our idolatry that drives us constantly into a variety of actual sins would be starved of its fuel.


AN ANCHOR FOR YOUR SOUL

How can we know for sure that the Lord is determined to bless us and not to curse us? Like Balaam, we too have gone astray perversely, wandering after all kinds of other gods. Why shouldn’t the angel of the Lord be standing in front of us even now with drawn sword in hand, waiting to cut us down? It would certainly be nothing more than we deserve. After all, even our best deeds—our most unselfish actions and kindly words—are often simply offerings to our idols, not acts of obedience to the living God. What shall I say then of my darkest thoughts and deeds? How shall I escape judgment for them? The answer is that if we are Christians, Jesus Christ has taken the curse that was aimed at us for our sin. The angel’s sword has already been plunged into his heart instead of ours. Our perversity earned us death, but Jesus died in our place. Our idolatry earned us permanent separation from God, but Jesus was cut off from the Father for us on the cross. Our sins placed us justly under the Lord’s judgment and curse, but in Christ we receive the blessing that the Lord has promised to all of the spiritual descendants of Abraham. The cross is the surety of the Lord’s unshakable will to bless his people. As Paul put it, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). For Jesus’ sake, the Lord is determined to bless us, and no one and nothing can ever turn that blessing into a curse.

Sadly, Balaam remained blind to the truth of the Lord’s goodness and grace. Even after his eyes were opened to see the angel of the Lord and he confessed with his lips, “I have sinned” (v. 34), Balaam’s heart was still a long way from true repentance, as his future behavior demonstrated. His words and his actions did not ultimately agree. He had chosen whom he would serve: Balak’s silver and gold, not the Lord. His heart was still captive to his idolatry, and even a face-to-face encounter with the Angel of the Lord did not free him from its chains. At the end of the day his donkey saw the Lord more clearly than he did; the brute beast understood more of God than the professional theologian. As a result, even though the Lord used him to deliver a blessing to his people Israel, Balaam’s own destiny was not ultimately changed from curse to blessing. All that happened was that his appointment with the sword of the Lord’s judgment was delayed. In the end he was killed by the Israelites when they took vengeance on the Midianites for leading them into sin (31:8).

It is still often the case that the Lord reveals himself to the weak and foolish, while remaining hidden from those who possess the wisdom of this world. Those who were blind receive sight, while those who claim to see are left in the dark. As an Old Testament scholar, I regularly meet and listen to men and women whose knowledge of the Bible and the Hebrew language is far in excess of anything I could ever attain. In academic terms they are racehorses, while I am merely a plodding donkey. When I hear their lectures and read their books, I learn many true and insightful things about the Bible; yet when it comes to the gospel they are utterly blind. They cannot see on the pages of Scripture the simplest truths about God. Many five-year-olds have more true Biblical insight into the gospel than they do, because spiritual truths are spiritually discerned, and for all their “wisdom” these people do not have the Holy Spirit to open up their stubborn hearts and blind eyes so they can see the truth that is right in front of them (see 1 Corinthians 2:14).

Could anything more clearly display God’s sovereignty than that? The supreme blessing in this world is coming to recognize who God is and how to find salvation in his Son. It comes as a free gift to those whose eyes he opens and whose hearts he touches with his grace. The work of his Spirit brings one to faith while another is left in unbelief, not because the one has greater merit than the other, but simply out of unconditional sovereign grace. The Lord chose Israel to be his people and left Balaam to his preferred darkness, though neither had any claim on him. Donkeys like us get to see and know the Lord, while professional prophets remain blind.

What is more, the future of those whom the Lord calls to himself is sure, settled by the unchangeable One and sealed in his blood. God cannot lie, and he cannot change his mind, as Balaam himself would declare (23:19). God has settled his inheritance on us with an oath, so that we may have the certainty of an irrevocable inheritance (Hebrews 6:17–19). Nothing and no one can separate us from that blessing, either now or in the age to come. Such a hope is a sure anchor for our souls and spiritual food for our hearts.

How then shall we respond? Surely we must burst forth with praise and adoration. Let us give thanks to the Lord for this inexpressible hope! May we rejoice in his favor shown to us! Let us rest in his love and bask in his settled attitude of blessing toward us, for as the psalmist repeatedly reminds us, “His steadfast love endures forever” (for example, Psalm 136).

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 269–281). Crossway Books.