What an Ass!

I want you to consider the story of Balaam. According to the Bible and his reputation, whomever he blesses gets blessed and whomever he curses gets cursed. In other words, he can make good things happen to people and he can make bad things happen to people. One day, a king who has heard about Balaam’s gift, asks Balaam to curse the Israelites because they are causing him problems. God in a rare moment where he speaks directly to people in the Bible, decides to tell Balaam not to curse the Israelites as if Balaam has the edge on god when it comes to doing and undoing curses. After this, one day Balaam decides to go on a stroll on his donkey. For some reason, god is royally pissed at Balaam. Here’s where it gets weird. God has spoken directly to Balaam before to communicate to him what he wanted Balaam to know. Instead god decides to get creatively complicated and sends an angel with a sword both of which (the angel and the sword) are invisible to people yet can be seen by animals to block the donkey’s path. And I haven’t even gotten to the strange part of the story yet. Just you wait. Balaam can’t see the angel so he beats his donkey. This happens several times. Here’s where the story starts getting into crazytown. God decides to “open the donkey’s mouth” and the donkey speaks to Balaam asking him why he is beating him. I want you to now realize and consider how momentous this occasion is. Not since the Fall of Man has an animal spoken to a human before. This is a rare opportunity indeed. Instead of being in utter shock that this animal has just spoken to him, Balaam decides to, not missing a beat, have a conversation with it, not even exclaiming how in utter disbelief he is that this animal, which has never spoken to him before, has now talked in words that he can understand. I guess when god has spoken to you, nothing really surprises you.