I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 22-24.

    The next king who found himself in the path of the Israelites tried a different approach to that taken by the previous two. He sent messengers to summon Balaam. We do not really know much about Balaam, but he was clearly a prophet of some kind with a reputation for getting results. Anyway, the story is that when Balak’s representatives first came to Balaam, Balaam asked God what he should do and God told him not to go with them. When Balak sent a second group of messengers, Balaam once again asked God what he should do. This time God told him to go with them, but only say what God told him to say. However, when Balaam set out, God sent an angel to kill him. Balaam only escaped with his life because of his faithful donkey.

    The passage tells us that God sent the angel because He was angry with Balaam for going with Balak’s messengers (the similarities between the two names in this story has caused me no end of confusion when listening to sermons on this passage, especially in my childhood days). This always struck me as unfair, since God had told him to go with them. There is however a lesson for us to learn here. If we persist in asking God for something, He may grant us what we asked for, but that does not mean He wanted that for us. That being said, I do not believe that God intended for the angel to kill Balaam. Instead, the angel was intended to remind Balaam that he must only say what God tells him to say. That is an important lesson for us. We must strive in all we say and do to only say or do those things which God tells us to say or do.