Sermon
preached in King’s College Chapel,
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM AS SYMBOLIC OF
THE ORIGINS OF PROPHECY
George Adam Smith
THE
story of Balaam has engaged the genius and been
illuminated by the expository powers of some of the
great-
est preachers of
Christianity; conspicuous among whom
(as we all know) are Bishop Butler with his sermon on the
Character
of Balaam and John Henry Newman in his dis-
course on Obedience without Love. Both of these
classics
display a rich sagacity and a solemn power of
searching
the heart. But they take different views of the
character
of this extraordinary heathen, and of his conduct
upon first
coming under the influence of the true God.
Such differences between high authorities,
equally honest
in seeking the meaning of Scripture, are to be explained
by the discovery, made since their time, of the
complex
structure of the story, woven as it is from two
differing and
even contradictory traditions. We now, also, enjoy a
fuller
knowledge of the historical situation and the
religious atmo-
sphere in which Balaam is represented as acting. We are
more able to place him on his proper stage in the
history
of religion--slowly making its long way up to
Christ--and
therefore more able to read the lessons which his
story is
fitted to afford us for our own faith and conduct.
1 A sermon preached in King's College
Chapel,
the Lord to bless
set his face towards the wilderness (Num. xxiii.
23). Henceforth I call you not
slaves, for the slave" knoweth
not what his lord doeth, but I have called you
friends, for all things that I have heard from
my Father 1 have made known to
you
(John's Gospel, xiv. 15).
The Expositor VOL. V. JANUARY, 1913. 1
2
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM
You
remember the outlines of the story. Alarmed by
king of
tant prophet named Balaam, the
son of Beor, to come and
curse this people which threatened to devour the
others.
But
under the influence of
reluctance and doubt, refused to curse; and in four
metrical
Redes or Oracles he blessed
sistibleness under Divine Providence
and predicting their
dominion over their neighbours.
The prose narrative, which tells us all this, is
one of the
finest m the Old Testament. Partly from the language,
partly from inconsistencies among the things told, it
is clear
that the writer has used (as I have said) two
different tradi-
tions of the story and worked
them, with some alterations,
into the finished form which excites our
admiration. His
indifference to certain
discrepancies of detail, which he has
left standing, is the indifference of a powerfully
dramatic
spirit, absorbed by the conflict of rival religious
influences,
and by the victory, even in a heathen mind, of that
purer and
more potential faith with which
interest in so lofty an issue is not disturbed by
the facts that
Balaam
is described now as an Aramean from as far away
as the
province1 now as convoyed by the
princes of Balak, and
again as accompanied by only two servants; now as receiv-
ing God's permission to go
to Balak, and again as exciting
God's wrath by consenting to go. Indeed the last of
these
differences, and the most curious, may be due not to
two
1 Numbers xxii. 5a
and xxiii. 7 from
appears (from the Samaritan, Syriac
and Vulgate) to have been originally
to the land of the children of Ammon.
For many other proofs of a double
narrative see the commentaries, especially Prof.
G. B. Gray's.
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM 3
discrepant traditions, but to the naive effort of
one and the
same narrator to convey the first confused effects
upon
Balaam's
mind of a religious force purer than the spirit
in which he was accustomed to perform his offices.
Such
an ambiguity would be natural in a man dazzled by
his
encounter with the new light; and the narrator was
only
following the methods of his age if he articulated
that
ambiguity into a tale of two opposite commands
from God.
It
is curious that Balaam himself contradicts his biographer.
God,
he says in one of his Redes,
God is not man to belie,
Neither man's son to
repent.1
This, however, is a subsidiary question, and
cannot affect
our reading of the writer's treatment of the mind
and char-
acter of Balaam. In Balaam
himself the writer is interested
throughout. Recently this interest has been ignored
or
denied, as if Balaam's character did not matter much
in the
devlopment of the drama. It is
true that the religious
interests of the story dominate the psychological.
The main
issue is between the purpose of God with
human powers which from Pharaoh to Sihon and Balak
have sought to frustrate it. But this conflict is
described
--in detail and with zest--as being waged, and as issuing
to the assurance of
perience of Balaam himself. I sympathise, therefore, with
the older expositors who concentrate their
attention upon
the behaviour of this
strange being, and take his character
as the pivot of the story; only I agree that some
of them
have wrongly interpreted that character. Bishop Butler,
for instance, treats Balaam as if his besetting sin
were
avarice. But except for an ambiguous
statement-in only
1 N um. xxiii. 9. So evident a
contradiction testifies to the original
independence of the poetical Redes and the prose narrative; and, 80
far aa it goes, is
evidence for the earlier date of the Redes.
4
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM
one of the traditions--there is no imputation of
avarice to
Balaam. On the contrary, when Balak's promise of reward
is repeated Balaam becomes only more decided not
to dis-
obey the word of God. Newman's explanation, that
Balaam
illustrates the insufficiency and the danger of
obedience
without love, is nearer the truthl;
but it lacks a full intelli-
gence of the issues. There is
a conflict in Balaam's mind,
but this is not between duty and avarice or
ambition. It
is a conflict between the habits and ideas under
which the
prophets of the heathen worked and the religious influ-
ence of a higher order which
is represented as coming upon
Balaam from the God of
spirit of
the other religions of the time, and it is worked
out in the
experience of one of the prophets of these
religions, when
brought face to face with the facts of
Balaam is essentially an Arab seer of an early
type--
the type which combined the priest's office of
ritual, the
diviner's reliance upon spells and lots, and the
prophet's
use of ecstasy and trance. Some of these men rose
to great
fame in
distance, as Balaam was called by Balak, to assist chiefs or
tribes who were in difficulty. One of the principal func-
tions for which they were
employed was to curse the foes
of their employers; and this was regarded as a
sacred func-
tion of divine efficacy, and
was accompanied by sacrifices
and other rites and by the reading of omens and the
casting
of lots.
To such practices our text states that Balaam
was accus-
tomed. He himself directs the
building of altars and the
elaborate sacrifices which precede his oracles,
and he goes
to seek for omens. Observe also in chapter xxiii. that when
1 Newman indeed denies that Balaam
"made up his mind for himself
according to the suggestions of avarice or
ambition."
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM 5
one site for these performances proves inauspicious
and
fails to compel him to curse
motion to change the stage on the chance that his
message
may change with it. That is a resource characteristic
of
paganism all the world over; and along with other
features
of the story proves the writer's fidelity to the
religious
conditions of the time.
But while continuing to try all these, his
professional rites
and shifts, Balaam holds true to one thing, that he
will
only speak the word which God shall speak to him. To
this he is constant, making it plain both before he
will con-
sent to come with Balak's
messengers and throughout the
course of gambling artifices which after his coming
are
employed to influence his message. His
faithfulness is
rewarded and his patience to listen receives an
answer. The
word comes to him, and it is a word not to curse but
to bless.
On what does Balaam base the conviction for
which he
has waited so impartially, and which when it
arrives is
strong enough to overwhelm his former practices and
ideas? He rests it on the fact that God has already
blessed
Divine Fact. That is the whole
matter-very simple and
very clear.
He puts it in his opening words-
From Aram
Baldk doth bring me,
"Go curse thou me
Jacob,
And go damn
How curse I, whom God curseth not,
How damn whom the LORD
hath not damned?1
* * * * *
Behold, to bless I have
gotten,
And blessing I cannot
reverse it!2
1
xxiii. 7-8. 2 xxiii, 20.
6
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM
The
facts are there, and in his various oracles he tells us
how he sees them. The people of
his eye that strange aspect of peculiarity and
aloofness which
even through the centuries of their dispersion has
marked
them out as separate from the rest of humanity.
For from the rock's head
I see them,
From the heights I
behold them.
Lo, a people that dwelleth alone,
Nor reckons itself of
the nations!1
There is nothing in their condition which is
ominous of
disaster, or which justifies a curse.
I mark nothing wrong with Jacob,
Nor see any strain on
any trace of vvearUness
or stress. lIe points to
their great
numbers--
Who hath measured the
dust of Jacob,
Or counted
to their wonderful progress out of
'Tis ,God out of
And theirs is the
strength of the wild ox;--4
to the goodly appearance of their camps, to their
fertility,
to the power of their movements, to the ease with which
they
defeat their foes:--
How goodly thy tents, 0
Jacob,
Thy dwellings,
Like valleys they
spread,
Like riverside gardens,
Like cedars God planted,
Like oaks upon water!5
* * * * *
1 xxiii. 9
2 xxiii. 21. 3
xxiii. 10 after the Greek. 4
xxiii. 22, xxiv. 8.
5 xxiv. 5, 6 (the last two lines from
an emended text).
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM 7
Lo, the folk like a
lioness riseth,
Like a lion uprears.
Nor will couch till he eateth the prey,
And drinketh
the blood of the slain.1
And
finally he, a -stranger and alien to the commonwealth
of
the strength of this people is instinct.
The LORD his God is with
him,
And the sound of a King
is upon him.2
It is in these facts, obvious to the plain man
but rhythmic
and eloquent to the poet, that Balaam finds the
Presence
and the Will of God, with the substance of the
message he
is to give to those who have asked him for it.
Against such
a tide of reality what does it avail to set up
bulwarks of
altars, of ritual and of magic? Of what use are
spells,
enchantments and omens? You will
observe that Balaam
does not speak of morality. He has not the
conscience of
the later prophets, nor any idea of God's demands
for
penitence, purity and service from men. It is
historical
and obvious facts on which he insists. Yet Balaam
has
his own sense of religion and of the character of
God. He
is at least awake to the Divine consistency; and
with some
anticipation both of the religious
faith and the rational
science of still distant days--which is
startling to find in
so early and rude a figure--he affirms the
regularity and
faithfulness of all God's working:
Arise and hearken, Balak,
Give ear to me, son of Sippor!
God is not man to belie,
Neither
man's son to repent.
Hath He said and doth
not perform,
Or spoken and will not fulfil it?3
1 xxiii. 24.
2 xxiii.
21. 3
xxiii. 18, 19
8
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM
There
you have his whole equipment and character.
Brought
up in the irrational methods of heathenism, accus-
tomed to believe in the
omnipotence of rites and spells,
and anxious to magnify his office, Balaam has yet a
cer-
tain openness of mind to
facts, a capacity of his own to
read their consistency and rhythm and a courage to
face
their consequences, which prevail over the prejudices
and
interests by which he is swayed. There is a
primitive
integrity of mind and a primitive reverence in the
man
which grips our respect--grips our respect and also lets
us
see how God in all ages has chosen and equipped His
pro-
phets.
Nor is our appreciation of this mind, groping so
far back
there on the confines of light and darkness, lessened
by the
fact that it did not rise clear of all the passion
of its time
but is described as working heavily in trance or
ecstasy.
Rede of Balaam, Bear's son,
Rede of the eye-sealed (?)
man.-
In vision he sees the
Almighty,
Falling
yet open of eye (?).1
In
and uncontrollable excitement has characterised the origins
of genuinely religious movements within
Christianity itself.
Balaam
has the servile temper which does not understand
the fulness of the truth
that has come to him and staggers
beneath it. He grovels under the approach of his
convic-
tions, but he honestly utters
them when they arrive. If I
may take another Arabian prophet, upon much the
same
stage of development as Balaam, I would remind you
that
Mohammed
behaved very similarly under the earliest im-
pulses of his calling-a bemused, ecstatic, perhaps
epileptic
man: yet he lived to bring all
1 xxiv. 15, 16,
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM 9
For this is the kind of man whom, though blinded
and
"prostrate, God shall one day call to stand up and send upon
his way in full control of his faculties. This is
the spirit
which, if it has been faithful as the slave of the
truth, shall
at last hear the glad words: Henceforth I call you not slaves,
for the slave knoweth not what his
lord doeth but I have called
you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I
have made known to you. In Balaam we have one end of
that long course of gradual revelation of which the
other
is reached in Christ and His disciples.
For in no other way did God raise up the long
succession
of Hebrew prophets who led to Christ. In early
see Prophecy so evidently rising out of the same
low re-
ligious environment and by
means of the same convictions
of inspiration by God, that the experience
attributed to
Balaam
may well stand as the symbol of the origins of Pro-
phecyl; just as at the other
end of the history of
equally curious figure of Jonah is the symbol of
some of the
later experiences of prophecy. God picked His
prophets
man by man out of a state of religion little
removed from
heathenism, and educated their primitive power, to
see and
to be true to facts, into the clear knowledge of
His nature
and His Will. Like those of their Arab kinsmen the
early
Hebrew
seers were engaged with a rude ritual-common
to all the peoples of their race-with divination
by omens
and lots, with blessing the arms of their people
and banning
their foes; while the trance and the dream were their
frequent means of seeking the Divine Will. But
gradually
1 Several features both in the prose and
in the poetry converge on the
probability that the date of the story as we have it
(whatever earlier
elements it may contain) is that of the early
nation was rich in instincts of power and growth, and
when the new order
of prophecy, recently arisen under Samuel, was
emerging from its rudi-
mentary conditions. See my Schweich Lectures before the British Acad-
emy on The Early Poetry of Israel in its Physical and Social Origins, 70,
71.
10
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM
they discarded all these things. Under Samuel
prophecy
was separated from the ritual with its paralysing influences.
From
Samuel onwards prophecy repudiated divination
and magic. With men like Elijah and Amos it threw
off
allegiance to political patrons; and in time it
rose even
free of ecstasy, till, as
phets were subject to the
prophets. And all these advances
and emancipations depended on the individual
prophet's
own mental integrity, on his eye for facts and on his
courage
to face them: the facts of his people's history
and the truth
of their present condition; the facts of the moral
world
and their enduring and impregnable firmness. There,
of
course, the prophets soared into realms undreamt of by
Balaam. It was this loyalty to facts which gave
them their
scorn of ritual and magic and their uncompromising
courage
against the political interests of kings and the
vulgar un-
ethical ideals of the people. It was this, and
this alone, which
to the last constituted the distinction of the
true prophets
from the false; who also claimed to speak in the
name of
God
and many of whom, though stupid, were not insincere
in the convictions they expressed. Personal
character
then, this mental integrity which saw the fact,
moral or
historical, and read it and was brave to be loyal
to it, was
the basis and condition of the true prophet.
Such men, bred like Balaam in more or less
servile rela-
tions to the truth, subject
in many ways to the superstitions
and false science of their age, God lifted out of
their
slavery and, in the words of Christ, made them
His friends.
They
enjoyed, as they tell us, a close communion with Him-
self. They were forgiven and they were trusted
afresh
by His Grace, past all their deserts or abilities.
They were
steeped in His purity, His patience and His
love. He
led them into the secrets of His nature and His
will. He
made them partners with Himself in His passion for men.
THE EXPERIENCE OF BALAAM 11
By
their own sufferings for the sins of others,1
He gave them
an understanding of His very heart; and they felt
how it
was not only full of travail for the spiritual
victory of His
children, but itself bore to the uttermost weight
the shame
and the misery of their sins and defeats.
That was the friendship to which God lifted the
prophets
and Christ lifted His disciples, and that was the
Gospel they
won from it for all mankind.
For all mankind-you remember the prayer of one who
was himself a great prophet: Would God that all the LORD'S
people were prophets, and that the LORD would put His spirit
upon them!
My brethren, for you and for me, the lessons of
this long,
slow and painful history of our religion are these.
God deals with us one by one on the ground and
the tem-
per of our own character. It is true that His Grace
does
meet and touch the very lowest-mentally and morally
the
very lowest. And of them he can make the highest,
for
He
maketh all things new.
But He must have on our part a certain
truthfulness, if
even He is to work anything with us; a certain
mental
integrity, however ignorant; a heart, above all,
for facts.
He
must have in us reverence and deep awe before the facts of
His moral world; honesty and courage to face the
facts.
of our
own characters and conduct. For these things mean
penitence,
and with the penitent alone He can work. Behold
Thou desirest
truth in the inward parts. If that is there, the rest
by His
Grace
shall follow. Of His slaves He shall make His friends,
lifting us through Christ into His Love-into the
freedom
and the trustfulness and the security, which no
sincerity, nor
courage, nor any other strength of character may
assure-
however indispensable they all are; but which
His Love alone
and a daily communion with Him can bring to our
weak
wills and feeble hearts.
GEORGE ADAM SMITH.
1 As notably in the case
of Hosea.
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