BALAAM.
Balaam comes into the narrative most suddenly—but he will never go out of it again. Other men have come into the Bible story quite as suddenly, but they have only remained for a time. Balaam will never disappear; we shall read of him when we come to the Book of the Revelation of John the Divine.
There are some historical presences that you can never get rid of. It is useless to quibble and question. The same mystery occurs in our own life. Some persons, having been once seen, are seen for ever. You can not get away from the image or the influence, or forget the magical touch of hand or mind or ear; they turn up in the last chapter of your life Bible. You can not tell whence they come. Their origin is as great a mystery as is the origin of Melchisedek; they come into your lifelines as quickly and abruptly as came Elijah, the Tishbite; and they take up their residence with you—subtly coloring every thought, secretly and mightily turning speech into new accents and unsuspected expressions full of significance and revealing that significance in ever-surprising ways and tones.
Why sit down and look at the story of Balaam as though it were something that occurred once for all? It occurs every day. God teaches by surprise. He sets the stranger in our life, and while we are wondering He turns our wonder into a mystery more sublime.
Who would have a life four-square, in the sense of limitation, visible boundary, tangible beginning and ending? Who would not rather be in the world as if he had been in some other world, and as if he were moving on to some larger world? We lose power when we lose mystery. Let us not chaffer about words. If the spirit of mystery is in a man, the spirit of worship is in him; and if the spirit of worship is in him, it may detail itself into beliefs, actions and services which are accounted right, and whose rightness will be proved by their beneficence. Balaam comes as suddenly as Melchisedek, as unexpectedly as Elijah; but we shall find him at the very last an instructive historical character.
He is called Balaam, the son of Beor, and he is domiciled at Pethor, on the River Euphrates. At that time the king of Moab was called Balak, and when Balak saw how Israel had destroyed the Amorites he said:
“Fighting is out of the question. If we have to come to battle, we may as well surrender before we begin; the numbers are overwhelming. Now shall this company lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field.”
You can hear the lick and the crunch, and be present at the destruction. It was a day of fear and much sorrow in Moab.
What, then, was to be done?
Herein came the wisdom of Balak. He also lives to the end of life’s chapter, for to the end of that chapter we shall find the touch of superstition in the human mind. Balak would have recourse to supernatural help. He had heard of Balaam, the soothsayer of Pethor—a man of divination, a person who had power to bless and to curse—the Simon Magus of his day. So he took advantage of his superstition, and thought to sow the air with curses which would work where his little sword could not reach.
That is not a mean thought. Call it perversion or superstition—you do not touch the inner and vital mystery of the case. The great agonies of life are not to be explained by calling them perversions, or labeling them superstitions, or denouncing them as nightmares or dreams; they are there. Man must obey voices which are not always articulate and reportable as to words and tones. It may be more superstitious to deny the supernatural than to affirm it. Never forget the cant that is talked against cant.
Do not believe that they are the heavenly, pure and brilliant souls who have no church, no religion, no altar; who live under the dome of their own hats and walk on the marble of their own boots. Whose prophets, pray, are they? They must be accounted for, as well as the Melchisedeks, the Balaams and Elijahs of old time. What is their history? Where have they made their mark? What marvels of beneficence have they performed? Or do they only live in the very doubtful region of sneering at other people’s piety?
Balak’s was a great thought. We do not adopt its form, but we should perhaps do unwisely to reject its spirit and intent. Balak said: “Numbers are against us. If it is to be a mere contention of army against army, Moab will be destroyed at once. The thing to be done—if it can be done—is to enlist the service and the action of the supernatural.” Quite right. We say so now. If that can be done, any other thing that can be done is contemptible in comparison.
So Balak sent for Balaam, who made answer that he would not come. By-and-by Balak sent other princes more honorable still, with offers of promotion and honor and abundant wages. Balaam said he would ask God. He asked God, and angered Him by so doing. Some second prayers are worse than superstitions.
So God said: “If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go with them; yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do.” But God’s anger was kindled against Balaam.
“And God’s anger was kindled because he went; and the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now, he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants were with him. And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand; and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field; and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in a path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side and a wall on that side.”
When Balak heard of Balaam’s arrival he was glad. Gold went for nothing, now the soothsayer had come. Riches were as water poured forth. In those days the supernatural went for something in the market-place. It is the cheapest of all things now. Ideas are without value; religious thoughts are mere breath. But Balaam remembered that he was only to speak what God told him; so he began to play the priest. He would have altars put up.
He took up his parable, and said: “Balak, the king of Moab, hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying: ‘Come, curse me Jacob,’ and ‘Come, defy Israel.’”
Balaam would have altars put up and sacrifices rendered. But the answer was: “No. Israel can not be cursed.”
So Balak took him to another point of view, where perhaps, the multitude looked greater or did not look so great. “And he took up his parable, and said: ‘Rise up, Balak, and hear; hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor.’” And again the people were to rise like a lion, and lift up themselves as a young lion; and the people were not to lie down until they had eaten of the prey and drunk of the blood of the slain.
“Well, then,” said Balak, “if that be the case, this thou must do for me: Neutralize thyself; be nothing; act as if thou hadst not come at all. Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all.”
But Balaam said: “No. You can not treat God’s messengers in that way. As a matter of fact, they are here; you have to account for them being here, and to reckon with them while they are here.”
We can not quiet things by ignoring them. Simply by writing “Unknowable” across the heavens we really do not exclude supernatural or immeasurable forces. The ribbon is too narrow to shut out the whole Heaven. It is but a little strip, and looks contemptible against the infinite arch. We do not exclude God by denying Him, nor by saying that we do not know Him, or that He can not be known. We can not neutralize God, so as to make Him neither the one thing nor the other.
So Balaam was the greatest mystery that Balak had to deal with. It is just the same with the Bible—God’s supernatural Book. It will not lie where we want it to lie. It has a way of getting up through the dust that gathers upon it and shaking itself, and making its pages felt. It will open at the wrong place. Would it open at some catalogue of names it might be tolerated, but it opens at hot places, where white thrones are and severe judgments, and where scales are tried and measuring wands tested. It will speak to the soul about the wrong doing that never came to any thing, and the wicked thought that would have burned the heavens and scattered dishonor upon the throne of God.
Balak said, in effect: “Would to Heaven I could get rid of this man.” He took Balaam to another point of view, and Balaam “set his face toward the wilderness, and took up his parable.” He sang a sweet and noble song: “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! And thy tabernacles, O Israel! As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river’s side, as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters. He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath, as it were, the strength of an unicorn; he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones and pierce them through with his arrows. He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a great lion; who shall stir him up? Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.”
Balak made a bad bargain that day. He added unto his troubles, instead of diminishing them.
Balak would gladly have parted with Balaam, but he could not get rid of him; and Balak was wroth. It became a king to become angry. And Balak’s anger was kindled against Balaam, and he smote his hands together and said unto Balaam: “I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast altogether blessed them these three times. Therefore, now flee thou to thy place. I thought to promote thee unto great honor, but lo, the Lord hath kept thee back from honor.”
Balaam then made a great speech to Balak. He said: “Is this not precisely what I said to the king’s messengers? Did I not say: ‘If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I can not go beyond the commandment of the Lord, to do either good or bad of mine own mind; but what the Lord saith, that will I speak’? Now, I will tell that which I see.”
And then came the parable of the man whose eyes are open:
And he took up his parable, and said: “Balaam, the son of Beor, hath said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said, he hath said which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open; I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh; there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth. And Edom shall be a possession, Seir also shall be a possession for his enemies; and Israel shall do valiantly. Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion, and shall destroy him that remaineth of the city.”
Then the parable is continued, Balaam looking Balak full in the face; and last of all “Balaam rose up, and went and returned to his place, and Balak also went his way.”
You can not carve your God into any shape that will please your fancy. You can not send for any true faith and bribe it to speak your blessings or your cursings. Balaam was a man of noble sentiments. Look at some of his words: “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” And again: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent.” And again: “I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh.”
Then take the grand words which he spoke to Balak, as reported in the prophecies of Micah. Never did man preach a nobler sermon than this: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”
Who can amend that speech? Who can refine that gold? Who dares touch that lily with his mean paint? Who taught Balaam that great speech?
We sometimes say we find, scattered up and down in ancient literature, morals as beautiful as any we find in the Bible. Possibly so. Who wrote them? Whence did they come? Is God the God of one corner of the creation? Is God a parochial Deity?
Is there not a spirit in man—universal man—and does not the Spirit of the Most High give him understanding? Wherever there is a line of beauty, God wrote it; wherever there is a sentiment which is charged with the spirit of beneficence, that may be claimed as a good gift of God.
Apostle Paul never uttered a nobler sentiment than is uttered by Balaam, as reported in the prophecies of Micah. This is the Sermon upon the Mount in anticipation. That is the vicious Church, built on the wrong foundation, aiming at the wrong Heaven, which does not recognize in every literature and in every nation all that is good, noble, wise, prophetic.
Balaam’s convictions and wishes disagreed sometimes. Therein he was most human. He knew he ought not to go to Balak, and yet he wished to go. He would ask the second time; he would doubt his own convictions, or he would adjust them according to the shape and temper of circumstances. Wherever he came from, he claims herein to be quite a near neighbor of ours. Doubt may exist as to the exact relation of Pethor to the river upon which it was built, but there can be no doubt whatever of the blood relationship between Balaam and our own age. Speaking impulsively from the center of his convictions, he said: “No. Nothing shall tempt me to go. You speak of gold and silver. Were Balak to give me his house full of gold and silver, I would not go. I am the Lord’s servant, and the Lord’s work alone will I do.”
Then the thought occurred to him—a second message coming, borne by more honorable princes: “Perhaps I might go and obtain this wealth and honor, and still do my duty.”
He is on the downward road now. A man who thinks to do forbidden things and spend the bounty for the advantage of the Church is lost; there is no power in him that can overcome the gravitation that sucks him downward. He says: “I will bring back all Balak’s gold and silver, and add a transept to the church or another course of marble to the altar.”
He will never return. God will not have His house so patched and bungled; nor does He want Balak’s gold for the finishing of His sanctuary. A nobler spirit was Abram, who said no to the king of Sodom, “lest thou shouldest say: ‘I have made Abram rich.’”
The whole story of Balaam is intensely Oriental and primeval. The first deputation is dismissed in obedience to a divine warning; but, so far as we know, “the wages of unrighteousness,” which Balaam loved, are carefully retained. A second embassy of nobler messengers, carrying richer gifts, succeeds. He does not at once dismiss them, as God had required, but presses for permission to go with them, which at last is granted.
Balaam would earn the fame and honor apparently within his grasp, yet he knows that when the prophetic afflatus comes on him he can only utter what it prompts. With a feigned religiousness, he protests that if Balak were to give him his house full of silver and gold he could not go beyond the word of Jehovah, his God, to do less or more; but he also bids them wait overnight to see if he may not, after all, be allowed to go with them. If his ignoble wish to be allowed to curse an unoffending nation be gratified, he has the wealth he craves; if it be refused, he can appeal to his words as proof of his being only the mouth-piece of God.
That Balaam should have been allowed to go with Balak’s messengers was only the permission given every man to act as a free agent, and in no way altered the divine command, that he should bless, and not curse. Yet he goes as if at liberty to do either, and lets Balak deceive himself by false hopes, when the will of God has been already decisively made known.
Balaam’s was a maneuvering life—very truthful, and yet very false; very godly, and yet very worldly—a most composite and self-contradictory life, and still a most human life. Balaam never breaks away from the brotherhood of the race in any of his inconsistencies. When he is very good, there are men living today who are just as good as Balaam was; when he is very bad, it would not be difficult to confront him with men who are quite his equals in wrong doing. When he is both good and bad almost at the same moment, he does not separate himself from the common experience of the race. He was always arranging, adjusting, endeavoring to meet one thing by another, and to set off one thing over against another. It was a kind of gamester life—full of subtle calculation, touched with a sort of wonder which becomes almost religious, and steeped in a superstition which reduces many of the actions of life to a state of moral mystery wholly beyond ordinary comprehension.