No Contradiction Between God's Two Answers to Balaam
T. T. Manger. Numbers 22:15-35 And Balak sent yet again princes, more, and more honorable than they.… The first time God tells him not to go; the second time He bids him go, but is angry with him because he goes. What dues this contradiction mean? There is no meaning in it till we drop the external shell of the story, and look at the moral working of Balaam's mind, when all becomes orderly and natural. There is here no contradiction. Between the first and second asking there is a change in his moral attitude. In the first he is docile and obedient, and the voice of conscience, which is the voice of God, prevails and decides his conduct. He enters into the second already half won by Balak, dislodged from his old sympathies, restless under the comparison between his old life and that laid open to him. When men revolve moral questions in such a temper, they commonly reach a decision that accords with their wish rather than with their conscience. Balaam has abandoned the field of simple duty — duty so plain that there is no need of second thoughts. It is clear enough that in no way could it be right to curse those whom God had blessed; this he well knows, and the spontaneous verdict of his conscience is God's first answer But, brooding over the matter and sore pressed by temptation, he begins to contrive ways in which he may win the gifts and honours of Balak, and also remain an honest prophet. Here is his mistake. Duty is no longer a simple, imperative thing, but something that may be conjured with, a subordinate, unstable tool instead of an absolute law. Having thus blinded himself as to the nature of duty, there will no longer be any certainty in his moral operations; confusion of thought leads to confusion of action; in his own transformation he transforms God; he now hears God bidding him do what he desires to do. Still, at times, conscience revives, his judgment returns, and then he knows that God is angry with him for doing what he had brought himself to think he might rightly do. This is every-day experience put into this ancient story in a dramatic yet real way. When a man has thus trifled with himself and with his duty, God does indeed seem to say to him, "Go on in your chosen course." He serves God in the externals of religion, but in business cheats and lies in what he calls business ways, and grinds the faces of the poor under some theory of competition, yet God prospers him; no hindering word comes to him from Providence or from the insulted Spirit of truth. It may be better, it may be, in a certain sense, the command of God, that one who starts on such a path shall follow it to the end, and find out by experience what he has rejected as an intuition. With the froward God shows Himself froward. To those who have pleasure in unrighteousness God sends a strong delusion that they should believe a lie. This is the concrete way of stating how the moral nature acts when it is led by double motives. It comes into bewilderment; it gets no true answers when it appeals to God; its own sophistries seem to it the voice of God. It can no longer tell the voice of God from its own voice. "Fair is foul, and foul is fair." (T. T. Manger.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Balak sent yet again princes, more, and more honourable than they. WEB: Balak sent yet again princes, more, and more honorable than they.