Then God came to Balaam at night, and said to him, If the men have come to call thee, rise up, [and] go with them; but only what I shall say unto thee shalt thou do.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab.
God had already forbidden Balaam to go. He asked a second time, and God let him go on one condition. Here he saddles up at first light. That raises the hardest question in the chapter: why does God let a man take a road He has already refused him?
God's answer that night sounds like a green light. It was not approval.
Not that this was the course of His holy will; it was God dealing with the stubborn according to his stubbornness. He does this when a man has no faith and no single eye. He lets him follow his own blind schemes. This is righteous, and this is how God deals with Balaam. Where He sees integrity, He graciously meets the trembling heart and the hesitating mind. But there was no hesitation with Balaam. There was self-will, and this in the face of the glorious expression of God's will. At bottom he makes nothing of God or His word. The true moral could not be plainer. We are told that when Balaam rises in the morning, saddles his donkey, and goes with the princes of Moab, "God's anger was kindled."
God's leave came with a condition: he could go if the men came to call him. Balaam did not wait.
Balaam's heart was filled with hatred of God's people, and covetousness raged inside him. This was no ordinary task, and it would carry no ordinary reward. He did not wait for the men to call him. He rose up in the morning, saddled his donkey, and went with the princes of Moab.
Balaam was not the only one to do this. Others also asked God about a choice they had already made.
God would now deal with the fool according to his folly. He should go as he wished. But God was determined to put him to shame, and to bring great blessing for His own people out of these schemes of Satan. The man's wicked attitude toward God here calls to mind the Jewish captains in Jeremiah's day, who were afraid of the Babylonians. They asked the prophet to pray for them, so that God would guide their path. But they had already made up their minds to go with their whole company to Egypt (Jer. 42). Let us beware of going before God at any time with our minds already made up.
He had wanted to go long before he saddled up. His religion was a cover.
Balaam's heart was all wrong, and we see him in chapter 22 in the sad condition of a man pulled by conflicting feelings. His heart was bent on going, because it was bent on the silver and gold. But at the same time he made some show of turning to God — an appearance of religion put on as a cloak to cover his covetous practices. He longed for the money; but he wanted to get hold of it in a religious way.
Balaam set out eagerly, with no idea how the journey would end.
Balaam had permission from Jehovah. He got up eagerly in the morning, saddled his donkey, and set out with Balak's messengers. He was not walking in the light... Balaam walked in darkness. He hoped to have his own way and to reap a rich reward for his villainy. What a journey!... Never was Satan more determined to curse; never was God more determined to bless!
God had His own purposes in Balaam's journey. That did not make Balaam's heart any less wrong.
On one side, Balaam's presence with the king of Moab would serve certain purposes. That did not change in the least the state of soul that provoked God's anger. Balaam needs a warning. God deals with him much as He had dealt with Moses forty years earlier. Only now He uses the donkey — less senseless than Balaam himself — to save and rebuke him.
Balaam's wrong step did not become God's plan, but God bent it toward His people's good.
Verses 12 and 13 show that God had first of all forbidden Balaam to go. Balaam coveted Balak's reward, despite the high profession in verse 18. It was wrong of Balaam to ask again. Yet when he did, God used his going as a witness of divine grace to Israel, as well as of his own perverseness.
- Asked — God had already closed the matter. Balaam asked again anyway, because he coveted the reward behind his high words.
- Allowed — The leave was not God's holy will. It was God dealing with the stubborn according to his stubbornness, letting a man without a single eye follow his own blind schemes.
- Rushed — He was to go only if the men called him. He saddled up first, and the eagerness of that morning exposed a covetous heart.
- Withstood — God's anger burned at his going. The donkey became a warning meant to save him, not just to stop him.
- Overruled — Satan was never more determined to curse, and God never more determined to bless. The journey became a witness of God's grace to Israel, and of Balaam's own perverseness.
And God's anger was kindled because he went; and the Angel of Jehovah set himself in the way to withstand him. Now he was riding upon his ass, and his two young men were with him.
God had just told Balaam he could go with Balak's men. Now, on the road, God's anger burns against him, and the angel of the LORD stands in his way as an opponent.
God's first answer to Balaam had been a flat refusal. The second answer sounded different, and the difference turns on one small word.
The first time, God had clearly forbidden Balaam to go with Balak's princes. Balaam himself had said, "The LORD refuses to let me go with you." The second time, the LORD did not refuse to let Balaam go with them. But He did not command him to go. There was an "if", which indicated that there was divine permission with a condition attached, but not a divine command.
Why would God say go at all?
This was not the course of His holy will. It was God dealing with a stubborn man according to his stubbornness. He does this when a man has no faith in his mind, and no single, undivided purpose with it. He lets that man follow his own blind schemes. This is righteous, and this is how God deals with Balaam. Where He sees integrity, He graciously meets the trembling heart and the hesitating mind. But it was no question of hesitation with Balaam.
The pattern is not unique to Balaam.
How little Balaam knew what the consequences would be of not bowing to God's first word to him! Suppose God has made His will known, and we still want our own way. He may well allow us to have it, so that we learn by experience how foolish our self-will is.
The anger was not over a technicality of travel. It was over what Balaam was riding toward.
So we picture the prophet setting out from Mesopotamia for Moab, with Balak's silver and gold filling his soul's vision. He was heartless about the devastation and sorrow he was going to try to bring on a people who had done nothing to him, all to get his reward. He was willing to blast a whole nation — men, women, and children. Nothing more horrible could well be imagined.
The word for "adversary" in this verse is also the name Scripture gives to the devil.
Satan is a name for the devil, the great enemy of God and man. The name is the same in Hebrew, Greek, and English, and means "adversary." Several other passages translate the same word that way, where other adversaries are meant: compare Numbers 22:22; 1 Kings 11:14, 23, 25.
Here the opponent is on God's side. Commentators identify Him with a messenger seen elsewhere in Scripture.
A heavenly being stood in the way with a drawn sword in his hand. He is called "the angel of the LORD." This was no mere servant. It is the same messenger who appeared to the wife of Manoah in Judges 13. He told her His name was "Wonderful." To her and to Balaam alike, He spoke with divine authority. He told Balaam that He had come out to oppose him because his way was perverse before Him, and that Balaam could speak only the word God gave him. The speaker was none other than He whom we know as the Lord Jesus Christ.
Two angers appear in this scene.
Balaam was so blinded by the god of this world that he saw less than his donkey. She "saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way". Balaam's anger was kindled against the donkey, and he struck her with his staff because she refused to carry him forward to destruction. His anger was unrighteous. By contrast, it brought out the righteous anger of God. God sent His angel to be an adversary to the man who would curse His people whom He had blessed.
A blocked road is not always something to push through. Sometimes it is mercy.
Sometimes we are doing our own will, or we are careless in how we walk. Then God in His mercy may warn us by a hindrance. It stops us, if we pay attention to it, while "the simple pass on and are punished."
- Permission. God's "go" came with an "if" attached — divine permission, never a divine command, and Balaam treated the two as the same thing.
- Abandonment. When a man will not be warned, God may justly leave him to his own blind schemes. Getting your way can be the judgment, not the blessing.
- Motive. God's anger reached the heart: a man riding toward money, willing to destroy a whole nation that had never wronged him.
- Adversary. The word used for the angel is the word for an opponent. Commentators identify this figure, standing in the road with a drawn sword, with the Lord Jesus Christ.
- Mercy. The blocked road was kindness. God still warns the careless by hindrances, and the wise stop while the simple push on and pay for it.