The Bad Example of Balaam

Balaam spoke with God and was given a true revelation of the way God viewed the children of Israel, but misinterpreted it. reversing its true meaning, due to his own greed. God said he saw no iniquity in Jacob because he had chosen them; Baalam thought he meant that he had chosen Jacob because he saw no iniquity in them. The result was fatal for Baalam and the Midianites.

The story of Balaam is told in Numbers 22 through 25 and Numbers 31:7-8 and 15-16. The aspect of the story that Jude highlights is Balaam’s greed.  Balaam was a man of several notable distinctions. The best-known of these distinctions is that Balaam was also the only the only human in the biblical record who had a conversation with an animal that spoke with a human voice. Balaam was known among his own people as a diviner or sorcerer. But he also knew and had conversations with God—the one true God, Yahweh—and was used on at least four occasions in Numbers 23 to bring forth true prophecies. In spite of this, however, he died as an enemy of God, a permanent example of a person ruined by greed and false repentance concerning it.

The story of Balaam, as far as the Bible is concerned, starts with the arrival of distinguished dignitaries from Moab at his home. Balak, King of Moab, thought he had a serious problem. The children of Israel, millions of them, led by Moses, have arrived at his eastern border. They have asked for safe passage through his land, to go to their own land on the other side of the Jordan. Balak has heard the stories of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt years earlier, under the same leader, Moses—the ten plagues, ending with the death of the firstborn, and the parting of the Red Sea—and he is scared. In fact, Balak and his people have no reason to fear Israel at this time. God has commanded them to leave Moab alone, not to take any of their land, and to pay full price for anything they eat and drink as they pass through Moab^.1 But Balak and his people either did not know that God has told Israel this, or did not trust that Israel would obey this command. They refused Israel safe passage, and sent a committee of their nobility to Mesopotamia to seek out Balaam. Balak has heard of Balaam’s reputation as a sorcerer, and wants to pay Balaam any price he named to curse Israel. Once Israel is cursed, Balak wants to engage them in battle and drive them away. God says “no,” and Balaam tells Balak’s messengers this and refuses to go.

Balak may have thought he was dealing only with the stubbornness of the prophet, rather than with a matter already conclusively determined by God. Or he may have thought the true God was like his pagan gods–gods that could be appeased and manipulated by our “service” to them. Whatever his reasoning, he then sends more and higher-ranking ambassadors to Balaam with still more money, and the promise to promote him to very great honor, and to do whatever he says, if Balaam will just come curse Israel for him.  Balaam is clearly tempted, for his first response to this offer is to state that even if Balak were to give him “his house full of silver and gold,” Balaam would be unable to go beyond the words of Yahweh⁴. Nevertheless, instead of immediately sending Balak’s embassy away, he again invites them to spend the night while he inquires of God again. (Recall that God had already said “No” in very plain terms).  So Balaam is, in his own mind, already beginning to negotiate. 

This time, however, God’s answer to Balaam—who was obviously determined to go—permits Balaam to go with the ambassadors, but warns him to speak only the words God gives him⁵. God permitted Balaam to follow the greed in his heart, to his own destruction, as we shall see later. But God also was angry with Balaam’s determination to go with the men, and sternly warns him to say only what God told him.

On the way to Moab, Balaam has his famous conversation with his donkey and a confrontation with the Angel of Yahweh⁶. Both of these events occur because God is angry with Balaam’s stubborn determination to follow his greed and go with the men to Moab. Balaam is so taken by his own greed that he is no longer aware of God—or of his Angel opposing him—but his donkey is. Three times Balaam’s donkey sees the Angel and turns out of the way, or lays down under Balaam to stop him. Each of these three times, Balaam beats his donkey. The third time Balaam beat his donkey, the donkey talked back to him! 

It was only after this conversation with his donkey that Balaam becomes aware of the Angel of Yahweh standing in his path. The Angel explains why he is there, that the donkey had saved Balaam’s life three times by turning aside when it saw the Angel, and that the Angel had more mercy for the donkey than for Balaam in his rebellious state. Balaam then offers to go home, but the Angel tells him to go on to Moab, but to say only what God gives him to say⁷.

One would think this would be enough to drive anyone to repentance! And, when Balaam arrives in Moab, at first he certainly appears to have repented. When he first meets Balak, he tells him that he has no power to speak anything on his own, but is limited to the word that God puts in his mouth⁸. When Balak then leads Balaam to the first high place overlooking part of the people of Israel, and offers his offering to God, Balaam meets with God, and brings back a true prophecy from God, blessing Israel⁹. Balak then complains that, instead of cursing his enemies, Balaam had altogether blessed them, and Balaam responds, “Must I not be careful to speak what the Lord puts in my mouth¹⁰?” So, in the first test, Balaam’s faith and repentance both appear genuine.

Balak then led him to a second high place, offered more offerings, Balaam once again went apart, met with God, and brought back another true prophecy blessing Israel. However, this second prophecy contained the seeds of Balaam’s own undoing: 

Behold, I have received a command to bless.
    He has blessed, and I can’t reverse it.
He has not seen iniquity in Jacob.
    Neither has he seen perverseness in Israel.
Yahweh his God is with him.
    The shout of a king is among them.

Numbers 23:20-21 (WEB).

Balaam spoke God’s words, but, in his rebellious state, he did not correctly understand them. Balaam apparently thought God was saying that he had chosen and blessed Israel because he had not seen any iniquity or perverseness in them, when, in fact, exactly the converse was true. God had overlooked Israel’s iniquity for 40 years because He had chosen them. But Balaam, like Balak, was apparently only aware of God’s judgments on Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea; he was not aware of God’s workings among Israel during the 40 years since that time.

God did not see iniquity in Jacob or perverseness in Israel because He chose not to see it after he dealt with it in chastisement, not because it wasn’t there. Ultimately, though this was far in the future in Balaam’s day, Jesus died for the whole people of Israel, so that the nation would not perish for their sin¹¹. Balaam did not understand this. But, had he stopped with his second oracle, his outward behavior would have been in obedience to God’s command, as he had only said the words God gave him. His faith and repentance would both still appear genuine.

After some more complaining about Balaam blessing the people he had been hired to curse, Balak led him to a third high place, where he could view a different part of Israel’s camp, and offered more sacrifices. This time, instead of going off to meet with God before speaking, Balaam saw that it pleased Yahweh to bless Israel, and, when he looked on the camp of Israel and the Spirit of God came on him and he spoke yet another blessing¹². Balak then became angry with Balaam and told him to “flee” back to his house, because Balak had hired him to curse Israel, but Balaam had blessed Israel three times.  Balak makes the point that Yahweh had kept Balaam from the promised honor.  Balaam responds that he will go home now, but he must first tell Balak what Israel will do to Balak’s people “in the latter days¹³.”

What follows this is Balaam’s fourth oracle, a vision of the coming of the Messiah, the “star” and the “scepter” that would rise out of Israel¹⁴, followed by oracles of the judgments God would bring on Israel’s neighbors. After that, Numbers 24:25 records that Balaam went back home. If the story ended here, it would have appeared that Balaam’s faith and repentance were both real.

But Balaam’s story doesn’t end in Numbers 24. In Numbers 25, Israel remained camped where it was, next door to Moab in territory also claimed by the Midianites. While there, they “began to play the prostitute with the daughters of Moab,” who led many Israelites into the idolatrous worship of Baal Peor, a deity worshiped by both Moab and Midian. The Midianites were also involved in this plan to assimilate Israel by intermarriage and by leading them into idolatry¹⁵. Indeed, when God brought a plague on Israel because of it, the event that led to the end of the plague was the summary execution by Phinehas the priest of a tribal leader of Israel who had brought the daughter of a Midianite chief into the camp, and into his tent, while Israel was mourning about the plague¹⁶.

Because of Midian’s role in the attempt to lead Israel into immorality and idolatry, Israel was commanded immediately to harass Midian, because Midian had “harassed” Israel with its trickery in the matters of Baal Peor and the daughter of one of its chiefs¹⁷. Several chapters later, as one of his last acts, Moses is commanded to lead 12,000 men of Israel to avenge the children of Israel on the Midianites¹⁸ by destroying them. It is recorded that, in the attack on Midian, when the Israelite soldiers killed every male in the camp of Midian, they also killed Balaam the son of Beor¹⁹. So it appears that Balaam, instead of remaining at home in Mesopotamia after he left Moab, returned and was found among the Midianites. This is made explicit in the next few verses. The Israelite army killed all of the adult males in Midian, but

spared the women and children alive as part of their booty. Moses reproved them for this, explaining that it was the Midianite women who were used to teach Israel to trespass against God in the matter of the idol Peor, and that this was done “through the counsel of Balaam²⁰.”

Thus, when Balaam took up residence in Midian, he was still seeking a reward. God did not let him utter a curse on Israel. But he tried to teach Midian—and, obviously, Moab as well—to induce Israel to adopt behaviors that he thought would bring God’s curse on them, and thus allow the peoples around them to assimilate them without a fight. Remember that one of Balaam’s true prophecies was that God did not behold iniquity or perverseness in Israel. Balaam taught Midian and Moab how to introduce iniquity into Israel, so that God would see it among them:

But I have a few things against you, because you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality.

Revelation 2:14 (NASB)

And he did this for money–just like those who follow his example in the modern church.

Next: The Real Issue with False Teachers is their Hidden Motivations