12 April 2026

Lessons from an Ass: Unlikely Prophet

Numbers 22:22-35

In the early twentieth century, French archeologists uncovered an ancient city in what is now Iraq, which had been hidden for millennia by the desert sands. That city turned out to be the long-lost city of Mari, which was mentioned in ancient Babylonian records. Mari flourished about 1800 years before Christ – roughly the time of Abraham. In fact, Abraham would have passed through Mari on his way from Ur to Haran. In that lost city, they found the royal library. Okay, that’s maybe too grand a word. It was a bureaucratic archive: mostly shipping manifests and inventories. (It is a painful reflection for every poet and novelist and playwright that we owe the invention of writing to … accountants.) 

But among the audit reports, there were also a few royal letters that had been copied in triplicate and filed, as one does in government, and in those letters a fascinating bit of historical information appears. The city of Mari had prophets. This is a thousand years before the people we call the biblical prophets lived. In fact, Mari had two different kinds of prophets. There were official court prophets, called the apilum, who served the king and who consulted the god Dagon before official decisions were made. We see some of those birds in the Hebrew Bible, too. Nathan was King David’s court prophet, for instance. But beyond these respected, aristocratic apilum, there was another sort of prophet in Mari, called the muhhutum. The muhhutum were strange, frightening people to whom the gods entrusted messages. They were not aristocrats. They were nearly always common people: townsmen, farmers, slaves, or even women. They would suddenly appear from the desert, deliver a message from the gods, then disappear again. Think Elijah, Amos, or John the Baptist. And the muhhutum were also regarded with great respect, even reverence. I say all this partly because I think it’s fascinating, but also to make sure that we understand something. The Hebrews didn’t invent the idea of the prophet. When God gave messages to his prophets, he wasn’t doing something new; he was simply making use of a long-established ancient social role. Which leads me to the main character of our story today, a Moabite prophet named Balaam.

As a prophet, Balaam seems to have been somewhere between the official court prophet and the desert wild man. He didn’t work for a specific king, but he did work on demand, and apparently could charge top shekel, because he was good. [Another bit of archeological trivia: In 1868 a stone was discovered covered with ancient writing from about eight centuries before Christ, and that stone, called the Moabite Stone, specifically mentions the prophet Balaam. Dude was famous.] Anyway, in Numbers 22, the children of Israel who have been in the desert for forty years are starting to move toward the promised land, and the king of Moab gets worried. Moab is on their route to Canaan, and he’s heard what they did to Egypt. So that king, Balak, sends messengers with expensive presents to that prophet Balaam. “Come to my court,” he says. “I have a nation that I want you to curse, and I know that your curses always work.” Balaam tells the messengers that he’ll see what the Lord says and give his answer in the morning. During the night, the Lord appears to him, saying, “Who are these men with you?” Balaam tells him that they were from Moab, and they wanted him to curse some vagabonds coming up from Egypt. God says, “Don’t go with them. Those vagabonds are my people.” So the next morning Balaam tells the messengers no.

The king of Moab doesn’t give up. He sends more important messengers, with even more costly gifts, and in the end, God tells Balaam, “Fine. Go with them if you like, but make sure you only say what I tell you to say.” And so Balaam starts off to the Moabite court. We pick up the story in Numbers chapter 22, verses 22-35.

22God’s anger was kindled because he was going, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary. Now he was riding on the donkey, and his two servants were with him. 23The donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with a drawn sword in his hand; so the donkey turned off the road, and went into the field; and Balaam struck the donkey, to turn it back on to the road. 24Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow path between the vineyards, with a wall on either side. 25When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it scraped against the wall, and scraped Balaam’s foot against the wall; so he struck it again. 26Then 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. 27When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it lay down under Balaam; and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he struck the donkey with his staff. 28Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and it said to Balaam, ‘What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?’ 29Balaam said to the donkey, ‘Because you have made a fool of me! I wish I had a sword in my hand! I would kill you right now!’ 30But the donkey said to Balaam, ‘Am I not your donkey, which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I been in the habit of treating you in this way?’ And he said, ‘No.’

31Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed down, falling on his face. 32The angel of the Lord said to him, ‘Why have you struck your donkey these three times? I have come out as an adversary, because your way is perverse before me. 33The donkey saw me, and turned away from me these three times. If it had not turned away from me, surely I would by now have killed you and let it live.’ 34Then Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, ‘I have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing in the road to oppose me. Now therefore, if it is displeasing to you, I will return home.’ 35The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, ‘Go with the men; but speak only what I tell you to speak.’ So Balaam went on with the officials of Balak.

At this point in the story, it is just possible that you have some questions. Let me start with the most important one: “Wait, is the God of Israel talking to a foreign prophet?” And this isn’t a one-off, either. When the messengers first came to Balaam, he told them he had to see what the Lord said, and in that statement he uses the sacred name of the God of Israel. He’s not going to consult Dagon or Baal or Marduk or Chemosh, he’s going to consult the God of Israel, with whom he apparently has a long-standing relationship. For context, it was just a few years before this when God appeared to the Israelites under Moses at Mount Sinai and made a covenant with them. They were to be his holy nation, a kingdom of priests. He would be their God, and they would be his people. Then he gave them the Ten Commandments, which begins “You shall have no other gods before me.” Israel was to acknowledge only one God. Their faith was to be exclusive. But God can play the field? God can go off and give divine messages to other nations and foreign prophets? Is that what we’re saying?

Yup. 

That’s what we’re saying. You see, there are no other gods like the Lord, so worshiping another god is settling for emptiness. But there were lots of non-Israelites in the world, who were not noticeably better or worse than they were, and God made them all and loved them all. Israel had no proprietary rights over God. Nor do we Christians. We are to worship only God, but God is bigger than our faith. God can speak to anyone who will listen. And God can speak through anyone God chooses. And that leads us to another question you might have had: “Wait, the donkey said what?”

Let’s review the story. Balaam sets out, apparently having agreed to God’s terms to only say what God tells him to say. But also apparently God doesn’t trust him and wants to impress on Balaam that he meant it. So God sends an angel with a sword to stand in his path. Balaam – the prophet! the one who’s supposed to be in touch with God – doesn’t see the angel. But his donkey does, and the donkey shies away from the path and cuts across the field. Balaam beats the donkey. The angel takes up another position. Again, Balaam sees nothing, but the ass does, squeezing against a wall to get by. Balaam gets a boo-boo on his foot and beats the donkey again. The third time, there’s no alternative route, so the donkey just lies down. Again, Balaam starts to beat him, and this time the donkey looks up and says, “Leave me alone, man! Why are you hitting me! Have I ever done anything like this to you before?”

Balaam, who is remarkably calm in the presence of a talking donkey, has to admit, “Well, no, you haven’t.” (By the way, this is one of the things that really gets me in this story. This wasn’t just a donkey that Balaam was beating. He was a good boy!) And that’s when God finally opens Balaam’s eyes, and he sees the angel with the sword, who tells him, “Your ass just saved your … your life. Three times.”

Balaam sheepishly says, “Should I just call off the whole thing and go home?” 

But the angel replies, “No, go ahead. But don’t forget that you are only to say what God tells you. We’re watching.”

We’ll finish this story next week, but before we end today, let’s talk about that donkey. No, not about whether donkeys can talk. Of course they can’t. But that’s all that some people can see in this story: the talking donkey. The typical debate is whether this should be read as a historical account or as a folk tale. If that’s what you want to talk about, knock yourself out, but do it on your own time. You’re missing the point. I want to ask a different question: Why did the donkey see the angel, while the famous prophet did not? The second part of that is easy to guess: Why didn’t Balaam see the angel? Why does any important person fail to see God? Because they’re not looking. Balaam was a notable seer, able to command a princely salary, known to have fearsome powers, and those who have achieved greatness as this world defines greatness, tend to stop looking for anything else. But why did the donkey see the angel? Well, what do we know about him? He was humble, faithful, trustworthy, and cared for others. How do we know that? When he saw the angel waiting for Balaam, he did what he could to save his miserable master’s life. Who is able to see the work of God? Those humble souls who are able to look beyond their own mirrors and see the needs of other people.

This story, whatever type of story you decide it is, has a clear message for us. God is always speaking and always acting. Everywhere. God is not restricted to speaking for or to or through any one group. Not just Jews, not just Christians, not just religious leaders, not just men, not just human beings. Most of us don’t hear or see God, though, because like Balaam we aren’t looking very hard. If you want to hear the words of God, cultivate humility yourself, and listen to what the humble and oppressed have to say to us. There are lessons for us to learn from the most unexpected sources, if we are listening.