Hot answers tagged balaam
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The first two reasons are easy to understand with Balaam being a pagan prophet.
After all his encounters with God and the angel threatening to kill him, Balaam doesn't dare do anything except speak the words YHWH gave him.
As a polytheist, he will sacrifice to any deity which helps him. Most likely, he is a henotheist (in the geographic sense) and ...
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The medieval scholar Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon) reads this as God allowing Bilaam to exercise his free will. He cites an earlier source, Numbers Rabbah 20:12, which says (Soncino translation):
IF THE MEN ARE COME TO CALL THEE, RISE UP, AND GO WITH THEM (XXII, 20). From this you can infer that a man is led in the way he desires to go. For at ...
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Rom 1.18 ff tells us that God gives us what we want and permits us to wallow in the consequences when we choose against his will.
God makes his will clear. Balaam wishes to go anyway. God stops him to remind him that his choice opposes God.
When Balaam feigns a repentance, God permits him to go to teach him although Balaam thinks that he is in charge of ...
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Some classical Jewish commentaries describe Balaam as a worshiper of Gᴏᴅ, but in a pagan manner: rather than submitting himself to Gᴏᴅ’s will, he believed he could compel or bribe Gᴏᴅ to follow his wishes through sacrifices & sorcery. (Note that Jewish tradition does not see sorcery as inherently evil or forbidden to non-Jews.)
In the Midrash, the ...
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