NOTES for Num 22:1-41
The story of Balaam is instructive—and at the same time it raises many questions. It is clear how and why it entered the Bible: this testimony “from outside” is so striking that it would have been both impossible and unwise to ignore it. Indeed, a man who is asked to curse God’s people ends up blessing them! Anyone has reason to reflect on this, whether a Yahwist or a pagan. What is especially remarkable is that the man in question is not a Yahwist but a pagan prophet who, in all likelihood, had never even heard of Yahweh before. How could it happen that God said something and revealed something to this pagan prophet? And, most importantly, how was he able to hear Him?
To us today, inwardly confined by the boundaries of familiar religions, confessions, and denominations, this may seem strange. We have somehow resigned ourselves inwardly to the idea that everyone has his own faith and that everyone receives, as we usually say, according to his faith. Essentially this is true—except that faith is not so simple. For us today, faith is often reduced to creeds, confessions, worldviews, and dogmatics—in short, to something once again denominational. Yet experience, genuine spiritual experience, is never denominational. God is God; He belongs to no religion, confession, or denomination.
He speaks as He speaks and to whomever He sees fit. Did God know that Balaam had never truly heard of Him? A strange question: of course He knew. Yet God’s knowledge is never confined to form. What could Balaam have known at all? What does it mean to be a prophet, even a pagan one—a prophet, for example, of Shamash or Adad, of whom there were many in Mesopotamia? To know these gods? To hear them? Who stood behind them if Balaam truly heard their voices? These questions remain unanswered to this day.
One thing is clear: to hear anything at all, one must know how to listen. One must know how to hear and be at least minimally aware of one’s own experience. Otherwise one cannot become a prophet—even a pagan prophet. But if a person can hear the many voices sounding through creation, he will be all the more capable of hearing God’s voice—provided, of course, that he wants to and remains spiritually honest with himself. Balaam had enough spiritual sensitivity and honesty to hear the voice of a God unknown to him—which means that he was a true prophet.