Numbers 22:13-21

BALAAM

‘And Balaam rose up in the morning, and said unto the princes of Balak, Get you into your land: for the Lord refuseth to give me leave to go with you.… And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab.’

Numbers 22:13

Balaam is one of the most interesting characters in the Bible; and it is a special feature of the Bible that it exhibits real living human characters. If ever you come to read the sacred books of other religions—for example, the Koran, which is the Bible, as you know, of the great Mohammedan faith—you will find plenty of moral and ceremonial rules, nay, a good many precepts which you will do well to incorporate in your own Christianity; but you will not be passing, as it were, though a portrait gallery of living men and women, whom you know well. Yet there is certainly no means so efficacious of teaching spiritual or moral truth as by example.

It is the divine mode to teach by example; and, bearing this in mind, as the result of many instances, let me ask, What is the lesson of Balaam’s life?

I. Now, when the messengers of Balak came to Balaam and asked him to do something which he knew to be wrong, he said, ‘No, I cannot go with you.’—That seems at first a very noble answer. But you know there is a way of saying No which means Yes, and I am much afraid that that was Balaam’s way. If you look a man in the face and say I won’t, that is one thing: but it is another thing (is it not?) if you halt and hesitate, and let your ‘No’ come stammering out as if you were ashamed of it. Balaam began by wanting to please God. He said, and probably he was at least half honest in saying, ‘If Balak would give me his house full of gold and silver, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord, my God, to do less or more.’ Yet he wanted to please himself at the same time. He asked God again if he might not go. He kept trying to curse the people, although he could not; and when he could not curse them, he tempted them to sin. What was the good of his saying, ‘Let me die the death of the righteous,’ when the only possible way of dying as the righteous die (and this is a lesson which belongs to you as much as to him) is to live as the righteous live? And so he went from good to bad, and from bad to worse, until, as St. Peter says, he became a perpetual instance of the ruin wrought in a highly-gifted human soul by ‘loving’ not God only, but ‘the wages of unrighteousness.’

II. Now, what was Balaam’s prime mistake?—I think it was this, that he trifled with his conscience. At first, when the princes of Moab asked him to go with them, he knew perfectly well that it was wrong. Probably, if he had spoken out like a man, they would never have asked him again. But he began saying to himself, ‘What a pity that I should lose all this money! Might not I go? Might not I just try again if God will let me go? What does it matter, if it is a little wrong? How do I know that anything worse will ever come of it?’ Ah! but this is just what it is so fatal to say. God speaks once to the human soul, and speaks loudly; but if you disobey His voice, it soon sinks to a whisper.

Follow your conscience, and it shall lead you to God. Believe me, the only way to get more spiritual light is to live according to the light you have. It may only be a light that breaks athwart the darkness; make the most of it, and some day you shall have more. There may be hereafter only one duty which is clear to you, only one friend or kinsman whom you can help, only one boy whom you can keep from evil, only one piece of work which you alone can do. Well, do that. Try to accomplish that one object. Try to save just that one human soul. Gradually, it may be after many a day, the clouds will break. You will know more of God’s will. He will seem nearer to you. His voice will sound more clearly in your soul. You shall enter into that divine peace which the world may neither give nor take away.

—Bishop Welldon.

Illustration

(1) ‘The story is told in the most vivid terms. The hesitation of Balaam, the struggle between covetousness and the fear of Jehovah, the tardy consent, the warning that came from the mouth of the ass, the sight of the angel by the way, are impressively described. No less so is the reception he met in Moab. He is met by the king and is hurried to the slopes of the mountain from which he may look on the camp of Israel. Seven sacrifices smoke on seven altars, but when the word comes to the soothsayer it is a word of blessing and not a curse. He is brought by the disappointed king to the top of Pisgah and to the summit of Peor. More abundant sacrifices are offered up. But the oracles are more decidedly than before oracles of blessing, till at last Balak, in despair, asked him to refrain equally from blessing and from cursing.’

(2) ‘For the sake of a handful of paltry dross he sold his eternal jewel to the enemy of man, and he earned the dreadful twofold epitaph which the New Testament inscribes with ceremonious reprobation upon his name. One epitaph is “Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness.” The other is “Balaam who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.” Life is a very serious thing, even for triflers. “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord!” ’

(3) ‘Keble finely describes Balaam:

“Oh! for a sculptor’s hand,

That thou might’st take thy stand,

Thy wild hair floating on the eastern breeze,

Thy tranced yet open gaze

Fixed on the desert haze,

As one who deep in heaven some airy pageant sees.

In outline dim and vast

Their fearful shadows cast;

The giant forms of empire on their way

To ruin: one by one

They tower and are gone,

Yet in the Prophet’s soul the dreams of avarice stay.

Nor sun nor star so bright

In all the world of light,

That they should draw to heaven his downward eye;

He hears th’ Almighty’s word,

He sees the angel’s sword,

Yet low upon the earth his heart and treasure lie.’