Balak met Balaam at the frontier of his kingdom. Neither king nor prophet were in good humor. Balak was affronted because Balaam had not readily responded to his requirements; and Balsam had the feeling that he was under restraint, and that matters would not develop as Balak and himself desired. Balak first took his visitor to Kirjath Huzoth, and there he offered oxen and sheep in the presence of Balaam and of the princes who had fetched him from Mesopotamia. We may perhaps regard this as a kind of official welcome. To whom Balak offered his sacrifices we are not told; certainly the one true God had no place in his esteem (Num. 22:36-41).
On the following day the real business commenced. “Balak took Balaam, and brought him up into the high places of Baal, that thence he might see the utmost part of the people.” This is the first mention of Baal in the Word of God. It was the chief male deity of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites, Ashtoreth being the chief female deity. (Sorrowful words to write!). This form of idolatory obtained a footing in Israel in the days of the judges; it was cast out in the time of Samuel (1 Sam. 7:3-6); it became firmly established in the kingdom of the ten tribes in the reign of Ahab; and Jezebel's daughter Athaliah introduced it into the Kingdom of Judah. This great evil was one of the causes of the expulsion of the whole twelve tribes from the land of promise.
Balak's object in conducting Balaam to the high places of Baal was that probably such a stronghold of his false worship would be favorable to the business in hand. Surely at such a spot Baal would help him! But he reckoned without God, and in a short time he was compelled to listen to the Gospel of God from the Devil's own platform! What discomfiture! Balaam took up the matter and asked Balak to build seven altars, and prepare for him seven oxen and seven rams. This wicked man probably had some knowledge of the sacrificial system which Jehovah had instituted in Israel. He knew that burnt-offerings were acceptable to Him; but did he really imagine that the presentation of sacrifices from such a man as himself would be so agreeable to Jehovah that after all He would allow him to have his own way, and curse the people? His blindness and ignorance in offering burnt-offerings at such a moment was remarkable. But whatever the oxen and tarns on the altars meant to Balaam they suggested Christ to God; and when Christ is before Him in the perfection of His great sacrificial work, what can He do but bless His people? Balaam understood nothing of this. He was as blind as the wicked men who put the blessed Son of God upon the cross of Calvary. There was an aspect to that cross of which they knew nothing. Little did they imagine that God would bring vast blessing out of their appalling deed!
As the smoke of the sacrifices ascended, “Balaam said unto Balak, stand by the burnt-offering and I will go; peradventure Jehovah will come to meet me: and whatsoever He showeth me I will tell thee” (Num. 23:3). Such a speech was an exposure of the man. Why the word “peradventure”? Did God ever refuse to meet any soul that sincerely sought Him? Why this language of uncertainty? It was pious cant. When he turned aside to “a bare height” Balaam had no wish whatever to meet Jehovah. His one desire was that Jehovah would let him alone, that he might do what Balak wished, and so earn his reward. Numbers 24:1 tells us definitely that he went “to seek for enchantments,” which means that he sought to get through to the demons with whom he was accustomed to have dealings. But “God met Balaam”—to his dismay, we doubt not! He told God of his altars and sacrifices (had not God eyes to see for Himself?); and Jehovah “put a word” in his mouth, and bade him return to Balak and speak it.
A distinguished assemblage awaited Balaam. The King stood by the altars, surrounded by all the princes of his realm. Surely there was never a more momentous occasion in the history of Moab! Balak had taken much trouble, and gone to considerable expense to get Balaam's assistance. Evidently he had a great opinion of Balaam's influence with the powers of the invisible world. Why did he not call the nation together in its supposed time of peril to cry to Baal for help? Why not convene such a gathering as that on Mount Carmel in Elijah's day, when the prophets of Baal cried for many hours, “O Baal, hear us?” (1 Kings 18). Balak judged that the Mesopotamian soothsayer was the most likely person in the world to help him. When Balaam returned from the “bare height” where God intervened and spoke to him, Balak and his princes were full of expectation. What would he say? Would he pour forth such maledictions as would blast the power of the people they dreaded, so that the armies of Moab and her allies might easily destroy them? Balaam had used the name of Jehovah quite freely in their hearing, and he had told them that he could only say what He gave him to say; but all such language was mere jargon to the pagan Moabites. Surely Jehovah could be bought, as all other deities, and was not Balak prepared to pay a high price in order to attain his ends?
“Balaam took up his parable, and said, Balak, the King of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the East, saying, Come, curse me Jacob, and come, denounce Israel.” Here is a clear statement of what was required. How little did these wicked men realize that they were really calling down a curse upon themselves! For Jehovah said to Abram when He first called him: “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Gen. 12:3). Let all the nations of the earth beware how they see the hurt of the seed of Abraham, however faulty they may be.
Having stated clearly what was expected, Balaam was constrained to say, “How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed or how shall I denounce whom Jehovah hath not denounced?” (J. N. Darby prefers the word “denounce” to “defy”). This should have sufficed to break up the meeting. No success was possible, and the sequel proved that the more the enemies of God's people sought to draw forth a curse against them, the more richly and fully the blessing flowed.
Balaam gave utterance to four parables. Taken together, they give the whole story of God's grace to His people. His wonderful ways are traced from His sovereign choice of them until their ultimate triumph under Christ in the Millennial Kingdom. Each parable has its own theme. In the first is set forth the special and exclusive position in which God had placed His people. “From the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations” (Num. 23:9). When God distributed to the nations their inheritance at the time of the Babel—scattering Israel was uppermost in His mind (Deut. 32:7). Israel was to be the center of His earthly dealings, and the people were meant to be a witness and blessing to all the nations, while divinely separated from them. “Ye shall be holy unto Me: for I Jehovah am holy, and have severed you from the peoples to be Mine” (Lev. 20:26 JND). Faith in Solomon responded to this in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple. “They are Thy people, and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron... Thou didst separate them from among the peoples of the earth, to be Thine inheritance, as Thou spakest by the hand of Moses Thy servant when Thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God” (1 Kings 8:51-53). But the people did not value their distinctive place of separation to God, Solomon himself becoming one of the worst transgressors in this respect.
Balaam was speaking “from the top of the rocks,” and thus described the people as God in His grace regarded them; had he walked through the camp and been permitted to record all that he saw and heard there, he would have told a different story, for the ways of the chosen people were scarcely better than those of the heathen Moabites. Israel's distinctive place in the earth has been forfeited by sin; but it will yet be restored in grace when Christ appears.
Meantime, the Holy Spirit is upon earth forming the Church, the body of the exalted Christ. God is “visiting the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name” (Acts 15:14). The Church belongs to heaven—all its blessings are there; and it was meant to walk in absolute separation from the world in testimony to Christ. Christians are called “the sanctified” in Hebrews 2:11; and the Lord Jesus said of them in John 17: “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:15-16). But the Church has been no more faithful in its distinctive place of blessing than Israel in the past. It has been said, and we quote the words with shame: “I looked for the Church and I found it in the world; I looked for the world, and I found it in the Church.”
God wants a separated people. Only through such can He be glorified; only through the instrumentality of such can He carry out His purposes of love. Paul told the Galatians that “our Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of our God and Father” (Gal. 1:4). He told the Hebrews, “Jesus, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.” He followed this with the earnest appeal: “Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:12-13). Shall we not, as individual believers, seek to walk apart from everything that is unsuitable to God and to Christ? Shall we not seek to be sanctified “wholly,” that our “whole spirit and soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23)?
The people in their tents knew nothing of what was being said about them in the heights. If God's thoughts of grace had really penetrated their hearts, how different their history would have been!
Balaam concluded his first parable almost enthusiastically (alas, his heart was not in the words that he was constrained to utter!): “Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel!” Our God is both great and generous; largeness characterizes all His ways of grace. In speaking of the great supper in Luke 14:23 He said “that My house may be filled.” Whether it be earthly or heavenly blessing that is in view, God always contemplates a countless host (Gen. 22:17; Rev. 7:9; 19:6).
“Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his!” The life of the righteous had no attraction for him (“He loved the wages of unrighteousness”), and had it been in his power he would have consigned millions to perdition; His end is noted by the Holy Spirit. When the five kings of the Midianites were slain in battle, Balaam perished with them (Num. 31:8). He was a long way from home at that tragic moment; but death found him amongst the inveterate enemies of the people of God, and still seeking Israel's hurt.
How great the contrast between Balaam, and godly old Simeon in Jerusalem, who, as he held the Babe Jesus in his arms, blessed God, and said: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation” (Luke 2:27-30). We shall meet Simeon again, for he appreciated Christ; but we shall not find Balaam in his company.