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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
Wait- there’s a talking donkey in the Bible?
Numbers 22
Introduction
“I just wanted to look.” That’s probably what Balaam was saying when he went with the princes of Moab. They kept offering him money to go up on this mountain and curse the Israelites.
They wanted him because Balaam was a prophet for hire. Now, he was a real prophet in the sense that he could genuinely hear from God and speak God’s messages. But he was also a very greedy individual in that he would use his prophetic gift for evil purposes.
And then these men of Moab come along and offer him a bunch of money to go up on this mountain and curse the Israelites encamped down in the valley below. So Balaam agrees to go. He says he won’t curse the Israelites for money, yet he really really wants to, so he’s just gonna go up there and look. He just wants to look. That’s what he says outwardly, anyway.
And what happens next? It gets weird. How weird. Well, if you’ve ever heard that there’s a story in the Bible with a talking donkey…this is it.
So turn to Numbers 22, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
(Continued)
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about that story with the talking donkey. And I kinda set it up for you in the introduction, so let’s get into it:
Balaam’s disobedience
And we’ll pick up right where we left off last time:
Numbers 22:21-23
21 So Balaam rose in the morning and saddled his donkey and went with the princes of Moab. 22 But God's anger was kindled because he went, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the way as his adversary. Now he was riding on the donkey, and his two servants were with him. 23 And the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with a drawn sword in his hand. And the donkey turned aside out of the road and went into the field. And Balaam struck the donkey, to turn her into the road.
A donkey can see angel here, but the religious man couldn’t. Now, this is a little weird itself. Why could Balaam not see the angel of the Lord standing there with a sword? Was he invisible? Was Balaam just looking down at a map or something and not looking up? What’s going on here?
I’d say that the Angel of the Lord is a spiritual being, and that Balaam could have seen the Angel, except that the Angel of the Lord is a spiritual being, and Balaam only had his heart set on material things in this moment. He was walking according to the flesh, so he only saw fleshly things. Balaam is sitting here thinking about that money. He is not physically blinded, but he is spiritually blinded. If Balaam had his heart set on things of the Spirit, Balaam would have had spiritual insight.
Now, why can the donkey see the Angel? Do donkeys have spiritual insight? I feel like God is making a point here: even this donkey is more spiritual than Balaam right now. Balaam is so focused on the money, he is more dead to the spiritual realm than even his own donkey. I think that’s the takeaway here for why God is opening the donkey’s spiritual eyes but not Balaam’s.
So the donkey turned to the side, and Balaam smacked it and said to keep going.
Numbers 22:24
24 Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow path between the vineyards, with a wall on either side. 25 And when the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she pushed against the wall and pressed Balaam's foot against the wall. So he struck her again.
26 Then the angel of the Lord went ahead and stood in a narrow place, where there was no way to turn either to the right or to the left. 27 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she lay down under Balaam. And Balaam's anger was kindled, and he struck the donkey with his staff.
(By the way, this next verse is the reason I can do this podcast)
Numbers 22:28
Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?”
Yes, that’s right, a talking donkey. And it will later say it’s a female donkey, in case you’re visualizing this in your head. I know this sounds like something out of a kid’s book. But it really happened.
Plus, my kid really liked this story when I read it the other night. And this is a hard thing to visualize, a hard thing to imagine- it might seem pretty far-fetched that the Bible is even telling this story as something real: something that really, really happened.
But I’ll tell you one thing, my kid had no problem believing it really happened. Now is that because kids are more gullible than adults? Perhaps. But there’s no shame in being gullible, if that’s the right word, when it comes to the Bible. The more quickly you can believe the Bible, the more blessed you will be. If your faith is in the Bible, your faith is in the right place.
Now listen, we all go through stages in life where we want to analyze the Bible. Test it out. Make sure it’s solid. Investigate its claims. I think that’s fine. I think the Bible is 100% true and trustworthy, and when you want to scrutinize it, I believe it always holds up to scrutiny. I believe it will pass the test you put on it.
Not everything is testable. I can’t prove to you that a donkey talked. Not without a time machine. So I can’t prove literally every claim of the Bible. But there are a lot of things we can prove, through archeology and historical record, especially in the New Testament. So it’s OK to check into the Bible’s claims and try to satisfy these curiosities, and I think every mature believer goes through that process at some point in their life.
But at some point, you have to settle for yourself this question: am I going to believe the Holy Scriptures? Am I going to accept this as truth and the Word of God?
Every Christian must come to this point in their faith walk. And the earlier you do it, the better you will be for it. You don’t have to intellectually understand everything about God and how the Holy Spirit works. And I don’t think you ever will, or ever can. Many things about God are mysterious. I sometimes feel like the better I get to know Him, the less I understand Him, because God’s ways are so much higher than our ways.
But you aren’t called to always understand God. You’re called to trust Him, and to trust His word.
That’s why I brought up how easy it was for my child to believe this story. Sure, children may believe things easier than adults. But Jesus said that you need to have faith like a child. When it’s in God and what God says, that’s safe. He said: “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” That’s a safe thing to put your trust in. Let it be very easy to believe what God says. Have faith like a small child.
And when you do, you see so much more in the Bible because the Bible is a spiritual book. And when you have something spiritual in front of you, you need spiritual eyes to comprehend what it’s saying.
There’s a surface level reading. The first time you read this story, you walk away saying: wait, there’s a talking donkey in the Bible? And that might be all you take away from it that first time.
But there’s something deeper going on here, too, that this story is teaching us. If you focus on the things of this world, the material, the flesh, that’s all you’ll see. But if you focus on the spiritual matters, you’ll see the spiritual.
There’s an angel with a sword standing here to kill Balaam because he’s going up on this mountain “just to look,” and he hasn’t had his mind set on the things of God. And so to get Balaam’s attention, God opens his donkey’s mouth.
If the prophet of God isn’t going to say what God declares, then God can open a donkey’s mouth. I find that amazing. It’s weird, but amazing.
I find the next verse perhaps even more astounding than the donkey speaking. The next verse is Balaam’s reaction to the talking donkey. Without missing a beat:
Numbers 22:29
And Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.”
As if the story wasn’t weird enough already. He just responds to it like he’s used to talking donkeys! I wonder what kind of life he had that a donkey talked to him and he just responded like he was arguing with a person.
Perhaps a talking donkey wasn’t as weird to Balaam as it would be to us. Perhaps after years of following God and hearing God’s voice, what is supernatural to us just seems more natural to Balaam. But this goes to show that no matter how spiritual you’ve been in the past, you shouldn’t lose your focus and connection to God, or you can become more blind than a donkey.
Numbers 22:30
And the donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey, on which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Is it my habit to treat you this way?” And he said, “No.”
I guess when your donkey starts yelling at you, you shouldn’t argue with him. Actually, one lesson I can pull from that: if you ever get mad at someone because they did something you don’t like, before losing your temper with them, ask yourself: has this person always treated me well in the past? If they have, the problem is probably not them.
I do love the KJV rendering of this verse…when the donkey was like, “is it my habit to treat you this way,” it says the way Balaam responds in the King James:
and he said, Nay.
Nay. Cracks me up, because now the donkey sounds like a human and the human is sounding like a donkey.
Numbers 22:31-35
31 Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, with his drawn sword in his hand. And he bowed down and fell on his face. 32 And the angel of the Lord said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out to oppose you because your way is perverse before me. 33 The donkey saw me and turned aside before me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, surely just now I would have killed you and let her live.”
This is why in my previous lesson, I titled it: why did God want to kill Balaam? God was literally going to kill Balaam for his greed in this story.
Also, notice that the donkey was a “she.” It was a female donkey. I only make note of that because I have trouble visualizing this story in my head without the donkey sounding like Eddie Murphy. And if you know what I mean, you know what I mean.
34 Then Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, “I have sinned, for I did not know that you stood in the road against me. Now therefore, if it is evil in your sight, I will turn back.” 35 And the angel of the Lord said to Balaam, “Go with the men, but speak only the word that I tell you.” So Balaam went on with the princes of Balak.
And that’s where we’ll cut off the story for today. We’ll finish next time with the story of when Balaam actually went up on this mountain to speak either a blessing or a curse. But yes, there’s a story in the Bible with a talking donkey, and I want to speak about that just a little more before we leave…
Housekeeping/Mailbag
Next time on this podcast, let’s wrap up Balaam’s story with what happened when he got up on that mountain and was asked to curse the Israelites. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
What weird stuff in the Bible do you want to know more about? weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com
Closing Thoughts
Is this story too hard to believe?
Well, I’d just look to Genesis 1:1
If that verse is true, anything else the Bible says is possible.
If you can believe Genesis 1:1, you can believe anything the Bible says.
(Re-read verse)
If you can believe Genesis 1:1, you can believe Genesis 1:2 all the way through Revelation 22:21.
I’ve heard lots of people struggle to doubt the supernatural conception of Jesus within Mary; a virgin birth. Now, I’ve never had trouble believing that. I don’t quite understand people who do. And I don’t want to be harsh if that’s a struggle you have. But here is what I always say to people who have that struggle: Genesis 1:1.
If that verse is true, anything else the Bible says is possible.
And that’s the same thing I’d point to for this story about a talking donkey. If God can create a donkey out of nothing, God can certainly open it’s mouth and put some words in there.
And that’s why earlier I said that this story is why I can do this podcast. It’s not because it’s weird. It’s not WHY I do this podcast. It’s why I can do this podcast.
Because if God can even open a donkey’s mouth, that explains how God can use me.
And here’s some good news: if God can use me, God can certainly use you.
And it you think that sounds weird, I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time.