In this post, I’m continuing my look at the Balaam stories in Numbers.
As a seer, Balaam’s business is spiritual insight. His reputation has been forged by his ability to perceive matters in the spiritual realm. This is the essence of the word seer, the one who can see what others cannot. In the pagan world, it is the casting of stones, the movement of birds, the entrails of animals that reveal the will of the gods. And this was Balaam’s business. The gods murmur and the hearer must keen his ears to hear. The gods flash on the horizon of sight, dashing through forests, lurking behind rocks or in caves and the seer must sharpen his eyes to see. The people ask, What does it mean? What must we do? What do the gods will? And Balaam answers.
It is not so with the people of God. “The Lord said to Moses,” is the constant refrain of the Pentateuch. Indeed, the whole of existence rests on the voice of the Lord. We are here because God spoke “Let there be…” The people of God wait on the voice of the Lord. There is no need for divination.
The story of Balaam and the donkey then is a story about perception, and how God is not like the gods of the nations. Balaam had learned by this point that it is the Lord who blesses and curses. At least he had admitted as much: “I could not go beyond the command of the Lord my God to do less or more” (Num 22:18). With this knowledge, the Lord sends Balaam to go with the messengers of Balak. So why does the anger of the Lord burn against him as he goes? (Num 22:22) Because Balaam had still not learned something fundamental about the ways of the Lord. Balaam knew that it is the Lord who blesses and curses, but he had not learned that is also the Lord who opens and closes. And God chooses to teach him this lesson by opening the eyes and mouth of a donkey.
Balaam, the seer, has no idea why his donkey is disobeying him because he cannot see the Angel of the Lord who blocks his way. By contrast, three times the text tells us that the donkey saw the angel of the Lord. This is the irony and humor of the story. The one who perceives spiritual reality is not the seer, but the lowly donkey. And more than that it is not the prophet who speaks for the Lord, but the voiceless donkey. How is it that the donkey speaks? The Lord opens her mouth (Num 22:28). It is the Lord who opens and closes, and he does it finally for Balaam: “Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam” (Num 22:31). Only then does Balaam truly see. He sees the Angel of the Lord blazing in glory with sword unsheathed. And then the Angel speaks for the Lord, “Behold, I have come out to oppose you because your way is perverse before me” (Num 22:32).
It is then that Balaam learns the truth of opening and closing. Opening and closing belong to the Lord. Balaam’s way was perverse because he believed otherwise. Balaam, the great seer, believed that spiritual reality open and closed at his bidding. But spiritual perception is under the Lord’s sovereign sway. It is the Lord who opens and closes. He closes the eyes of Balaam to the presence of the angel. He opens the mouth of the donkey to speak. It is the Lord who will open Balaam’s mouth to bless his people. When he has shown this Balaam, then he sends him on his way. “Go with the men, but speak only the word that I tell you” (Num 22:35). In the same way that the donkey’s mouth was opened, so Balaam’s eyes were opened, and so it will be when Balaam prophesies. Balaam was to be the Lord’s donkey–a mere mouthpiece.
In this story, God places Balaam in an enacted fairy tale, in a sort of living Aesop’s fable. It is the donkey who sees, not the seer. And in his blindness, Balaam mercilessly beats the donkey because he cannot conceive that this animal who has faithfully served him for years might have a reason for her obstinacy. Again, the seer cannot see. There is something here about the power of stories to open our eyes to the reality of the world. We are often like Balaam, and I believe that God uses the power of story to open our eyes. He is not merely the God who speaks. He is the great weaver of stories, and in his literary genius he is weaving all stories into his great story of redemption.
Great stories, and especially fantastic ones, remind us of that reality. We might think we understand sin in some abstract sense, but reading of Frodo’s struggle with the ring of power, and seeing the havoc it reeked in Gollum’s life helps us truly see the weight of sin. We might understand the darkness of sin, but when we hear Gollum whispering in the dark to his precious, we see the hideousness of sin. And so it is with all great stories. In reading them, we might just have our eyes opened to the glories that stand before us along our way.