On Reaching a Compromise

“Because you’ve been making a fool of me!”

(No one likes to be taken for a fool. It’s embarrassing… intimidating. There’s pride at stake, reputations to recover. Revenge to consider?        Or perhaps one can make a compromise so that all is not lost.)

Would you have ever attempted a compromise with God?

After the Israelites had endured their 40-year sentence in the wilderness, the time came for The Lord to lead them out and bring them into the Promised Land. But their conquest wasn’t going to be any easy takeover. There were many skirmishes and outright battles to win to possess the land.  Their numbers were very confronting – over 600,000 military men aged over twenty years old – with their families they could possibly have numbered up to three million people!

They defeated and destroyed the Amorites, then camped in the acacia plains of Moab east of the Jordan River, opposite Jericho. The campsite was enormous, and not just a conglomeration of tents as far as the eye could see.  It was a well-designed city, sectioned off in four distinct tribal areas to the East, South, West and North of a central temple precinct, above which hovered the God of the Israelites in the cloud on fire day after day, and in a column of fire every night.

The people of Moab were overcome with dread when they learned what had happened to the Amorites. Moab’s king Balak realised his people had no strength against the Israelite multitude, so he consulted with the leaders of his eastern neighbours in Midyan, saying of the Israelite encampment ‘they cover the face of the earth!’ Balak sent messengers with a generous diviner’s fee to Balaam – a soothsayer living in Midyan near the Euphrates River – requesting he come at once to curse the Israelites so that Moab could drive them away.

Here’s where Balaam gets very interesting:

 He told the Moabite envoys to stay overnight, and the next morning he would give them God’s answer. Balaam’s conversation with God is recorded in Numbers 22:9-12 with God’s instruction “You are not to go (back) with them; you are not to curse the people, because they are blessed.” [CJB] The messengers returned to Balak in Moab without the magician.

Panicky and desperate, King Balak sent a second delegation to Balaam. The Bible describes these emissaries as princes of high-ranking. Although they promised Balaam great honour and ‘name-your-reward’, Balaam again answered that he couldn’t go beyond the word of The Lord God… however, he added “stay overnight, so that I may find out what else (The Lord) Adonai will say to me.” [CJB]

Numbers 22:20 records God’s words to Balaam during the night. He said, “If the men come to call you, rise and go with them; but only the word which I speak to you – that shall you do.” [NKJV] In the morning, Balaam saddled his donkey and went with them.

Something that always puzzled me is:

Why did the Angel of the Lord block Balaam’s journey to Moab with sword drawn?

God’s anger blazed at Balaam because he was going after-all, and the Angel of The Lord with drawn sword in hand, stood on the road to block his way. Balaam’s donkey saw the angel and went sideways – bolting into the field. Balaam beat her until she came back onto the road. Then further along, the road narrowed between stone walls, and there the Angel of The Lord stood again. The donkey pushed up against the wall, can you picture her? Shying at the appearance of a terrifying angel and crushing Balaam’s foot against the stone wall. He beat her again!

Third and last time the angel stood in the tightest space directly in front of the mounted donkey, she was unable to bolt or shy so she sat down!  I can imagine Balaam struggling to get off, his face red with rage. He hit the donkey in his wild fury – and she spoke. The Lord enabled her to speak to Balaam, “what have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?”

Balaam yelled at her, “Because you’ve been making a fool of me!” [Numbers 22:29 CJB]

(You can read the rest of this account yourself for I’m not going further into what happened next.) I’m looking for the reason why the Angel of The Lord was going to kill Balaam, when it appeared that he had permission from God to go. When we look again at the first time The Lord spoke to Balaam, He had clearly instructed “You are not to go with them; you are not to curse the people, because they are blessed.”

Did God change His mind when Balaam asked Him a second time? I don’t think so. God isn’t like us in the way we change our minds to suit our own agenda. God gave Balaam a choice, “If the men come to call you, rise and go with them”. The Bible doesn’t tell us whether they came to him, so I think maybe Balaam already made up his mind to take his chances with the choice, after all, didn’t God say “but only the word which I speak to you – that shall you do.” He could do that much, couldn’t he???

Balaam put himself in grave danger of yielding to temptation – the riches promised to him by King Balak. Maybe he could weasel some way of speaking the words which God told him – and still come back handsomely rewarded. Why else would Balaam have decided to travel such a long distance and come back again if there wasn’t something in it, for him?

By taking the temptation of the choice, Balaam disobeyed God’s clear instruction that he was NOT to go! God didn’t tempt Balaam, he tempted himself, by reaching for a compromise.

God was able to make a donkey speak – so He was certainly able to make a magician speak words of BLESSING on His people Israel! It turned out when Balaam couldn’t utter curses, that God put words of blessing in his mouth THREE times (much to King Balak’s dismay and anger!)

Balaam made a fool of himself, all by himself. He didn’t need a donkey to do that for him. Neither do we.

The Angel of The Lord carries a sharp two-edged sword against compromise, and Revelation 2:14 describes that which God has against us, is the ‘doctrine (teaching) of Balaam’ [Numbers: chapters 23, 24, 25] which led to a massively fatal stumbling block for Israel when they compromised by worshiping other gods and sexual sin.

God is not a god of compromise. His Word is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. [Hebrews 4:12 NKJV]  

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Scripture quotations taken from the Spirit-Filled Life Bible,

The Holy Bible, New King James Version

Copyright © 1991 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.                                        

 Scripture quotations taken from the Complete Jewish Bible

Copyright © 1998 and 2016 by David H Stern

.Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide