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

In one way, I am somewhat confused by the account of Balaam and his donkey.  The thing which always strikes me as confusing is why God sent an angel to kill him on the way.  Of course, that’s not quite what the passage says, even though we usually read it that way.  It says the God sent an angel to oppose Balaam, then a little later the angel tells Balaam that, if not for his donkey, he would have killed Balaam.  So, three times the donkey saved Balaam’s life by avoiding the angel which was there prepared to kill Balaam, but all Balaam could think about was that the donkey had embarrassed him.  I was going somewhere else when I started writing, but I think this is more important.  Balaam was prepared to kill his donkey, which had been his faithful servant for many years at this point, because it embarrassed him in front of strangers.  We don’t often remember that the incident with the donkey occurred in front of the Moabite officials which Balak had sent to hire Balaam.  So, Balaam beat the donkey three times.  When the donkey was given a voice and asked him why, Balaam answered that he wished he had a sword so that he could kill the donkey.  It never crossed his mind to think about how out of character the donkey’s behavior was and to wonder why it was behaving that way.  We should not allow embarrassment cause us to behave in like manner, but all too often we do.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.