God’s Word for You

Numbers 22:21-29 The donkey speaks

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, November 12, 2021

Balaam’s Donkey

21 Balaam got up in the morning, saddled his donkey, and went with the officials of Moab. 22 But God’s anger burned because Balaam was going with them.

God sent Balaam off with the Moabites, but then God’s anger burned against Balaam. Is there a contradiction here? Does God give permission, and then change his mind? No, not at all. God’s anger wasn’t about Balaam’s trip, but about Balaam’s motive. “Balaam son of Beor loved the wages of wickedness” (2 Peter 2:15). So God sent his Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, to warn Balaam.

We should notice that Balaam saddled his donkey to take this journey. God will use this donkey to his own glory and for his own purpose, and this shouldn’t surprise us. “God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:28). Balaam began the trip by sitting on the donkey, but he would sit at the donkey’s feet as a pupil soon enough.

So the Angel of the LORD stood in the road to oppose him. Balaam was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him.

I already stated that the Angel of the Lord here was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Lord himself. There are angels of the Lord in the Bible that are not God but are his messenger angels (for example, the angel of the Lord sent by the Lord in 1 Chronicles 21:15, and the joyful angel of the Lord that rolled away the stone in Matthew 28:2-7). There is nothing in the spelling of the title or the capitalization that tells us his identity, for Hebrew has no capital letters. We learn the identity of the angel by the words he speaks. In this case, he will identify himself as God in verse 32. There he will say, “Your path is a reckless one before me,” whereas an angel would have said, “before God.” Now the divine Angel stood, unseen, in the road opposite Balaam.

23 The donkey saw the Angel of the LORD standing in the road, with his drawn sword in his hand. So the donkey turned off the road and went into the field. Balaam struck the donkey to make it turn back to the road. 24 Then the Angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path between the vineyards with walls on both sides. 25 The donkey saw the Angel of the LORD and pressed against the wall and squeezed Balaam’s foot against the wall. Balaam struck the donkey again.

The donkey saw what Balaam could not: God, standing like an angel, with a drawn sword. When the donkey veered away, her master beat her and made her return to the road. Then a second encounter happened on the same road, on a narrow way between the walls of some vineyards, and this time the donkey had to press against the wall to avoid the Angel, hurting Balaam’s foot as she did so. Another beating followed.

The drawn sword of the Angel is emphasized in the first encounter. Keep the sword in mind as the journey continues…

26 Then the Angel of the LORD went ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn to the right or to the left. 27 The donkey saw the Angel of the LORD and lay down under Balaam. Balaam’s anger burned, and he struck the donkey with his staff.

In the third encounter with the Angel, there was no room at all for the donkey to walk. The way was getting narrower and narrower. At first, the donkey could just wander into a field. The second time, she (‘aton is a female donkey in Hebrew; hamor is a male ) had to scrape the stone wall. This third time there was nowhere to go, so she simply lay down. For the third time, she got a beating for this, even though she spared Balaam’s life.

28 The LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, which said to Balaam, “What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?”

Now God gave to this donkey the ability to speak. Peter said, “Balaam was rebuked for his wrongdoing by a donkey—a beast without speech—who spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness” (2 Peter 2:16).

Of course there are some who scoff at the idea of an animal talking. But just because the devil could cause a serpent to speak (Genesis 3:1), it does not follow that God could not do the same thing with a donkey. There is also an eagle that calls out with a message from God in Revelation 8:13, but we can set that instance aside since it is part of a vision and not a literal report of an historical event.

The speech of the donkey should have been especially significant to Balaam, since as a pagan diviner and a false prophet, he would have held a special and immensely important significance to the words spoken by an animal. In later times, many Greeks believed (or claimed) that a serpent spoke through a woman known as the Pythia as an oracle at Delphi.

Equally remarkable about this donkey was that she was able to see what Balaam could not. He should have been humiliated by that, since “sight” or “vision” was especially prized by seers and soothsayers (Isaiah 30:10). The next tool of a man like Balaam was his speech; the ability to sway the minds of people with his words (2 Chronicles 33:18). But it was the donkey who was given speech, and this was a gift from God. Her message was simple: “What have I done wrong and why did you keep beating me?”

29 Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have made a fool of me! If only there was a sword in my hand, I would kill you now!”

The donkey had avoided the Angel because of his brilliant glory and because the Lord held a drawn sword in his hand. Now Balaam makes a threat to his mount and says that if only he had a sword, he would kill her. It’s precisely what she had saved him from. The irony might be lost on some readers, but the text still stands and instructs even for those who miss that point.

All of the critics who say that a donkey could not possibly speak with human speech are judging the text of verse 28 and denying that it could be true, “The Lord opened the mouth of the donkey.” They truly don’t care about the donkey. What they are denying is that there is a God Almighty in heaven who does whatever he pleases (Psalm 115:3). If God could not make a donkey speak, then God could not form any of the living creatures from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:19), and God could not himself speak with Abraham or Moses, and God could not be incarnate as Christ our Savior. But man would still be in his sins and accountable for his sins. Therefore, anyone who denies that the donkey could speak by the command, power, or permission from God, is still in his or her sins, and is in mortal danger of blasphemy and unbelief.

What a simple thing for God to open the throat of a creature like a donkey to accomplish a task just as easily as a man might pick up his hoe or plowshare to chop at the soil to plant his garden. We believe this miracle without hesitation, because we also believe the miracle of our own conversion. Oh that the Lord of the universe would reach down his hand from on high, deliver me, and rescue me! (Psalm 144:7). That God would put words into a donkey is not troublesome to me in the least. That God would use me and my words in his service? That’s an overwhelming miracle. I am nobody. I am nothing. But God has made me his child. Bless his name forever!

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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