Numbers 22:32-33

And here was this Balaam who had pretensions of being a good person, but who was thoroughly evil taking it out on the righteous—those who saw God, and who were trying to do what He said. Balaam, who was in the seat of power over the donkey, took it out on her. And so God's concern was for his creature.

Very interesting.

I want to look at this word "perverse" (verse 32). In Hebrew the word is yarat. It does not quite mean "perverse." Perverse is OK, but the preferred meaning is interesting. It means, "to precipitate; to be precipitant; to push headlong; to drive recklessly."

God says, "Your way is headlong and reckless before Me. It is precipitant."

It is like going 90 mph down a steep hill, heedless of the danger at the bottom. Balaam had no foresight. And God says, "that's perverse. Balaam, you are not looking ahead to the consequences! Your way is going to get you into trouble."

He is like the daredevil, Evel Knievel, who without thought or terror, endangers his life, and other's for his own selfish purposes. He just rushes through life for everything that he can get out of it, and doesn't think about what's going to happen afterward, or at the end.

Like I said, he is a man who can't look past the end of his nose. He is so consumed with himself that he sees nothing down the road, except for what is happening now.

And God said, "That is perverse."

A wise man looks ahead, and sees where he is going to land. If a man like Balaam gets up a head of steam, he thinks that no one is going to stop him. Conversely, if we consider the donkey to stand for those who actually see God at work, we can notice a few things.

The donkey responds to God's direction.

The donkey is persecuted for her obedience.

The donkey, in her meekness, does not retaliate. Does she reach back and nip Balaam like he should have been? No.

And God said that it was for her sake that He had not carried out His judgment on Balaam.

Numbers 22:26-34

Notice, there was weakness. Balaam simply did not know the entire situation. He just acted carnally; that is all there was to it—the way he had been trained to think and go and do. He did not know that the Angel was blocking the way and making the donkey do what it did. What this teaches us is that sin does not always occur in a straightforward manner. We will see a little later where God, in a sense (He did not actually do this), but came close to making David sin. David did it on his own, but God was involved.

God was involved in this situation we just read, because the Angel was there and Balaam did not have any idea what was going on. He was being used to present a lesson for you and me about the way He judges. He took that into consideration. What this teaches us is that sin does not always occur in a straightforward manner, with everyone involved fully informed so as to be able to discern right and wrong.

Numbers 22:28-34

What Balaam did was quickly forgiven, overlooked. Now what does this teach us? It teaches us that sin does not always occur in a straight-forward manner. As we saw with Abimelech and Abraham, Abimelech was led into almost sinning grievously, and he would have sinned had not God intervened. Abraham was the more guilty of the two because he was leading Abimelech into the sin by his lie. But we also know from the context that Abraham too committed a sin of weakness. "Out of fear I was afraid," and so Abraham too did not sin willfully. It was not presumptuous.