Tag Archives: Balak

“We Must Be Cautious”

August 26, 2025 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor. And the Lord’s anger burned against them.
Numbers 25:1-3 (NIV)

I get it. The ancient episodes in the Great Story are often strange, confusing, and even offensive to modern political and cultural sensibilities. Yet, lying behind the veil of time are deep spiritual implications that are as relevant today as they have ever been. Today’s chapter is one of those.

We’ve just been through two chapters telling the story of Balaam the spiritual guru for hire who was contracted by Balak the King of Moab to curse the Hebrew tribes camped outside his kingdom. Balaam failed and returned home. So it would appear that Balaam has exited the story and the events of today’s chapter are unrelated.

But they’re not.

In today’s chapter, men from the Hebrew camp begin flirting with some women from Moab. They are invited for a meal, which turns into some wild parties that turn into sexual orgies. The Hebrew men are then invited to go to the Moabite’s pagan church with their new girlfriends, make some sacrifices, and participate in the pagan rituals. The men shrug and follow along.

Hard stop.

At this point, I find it important for me to remember that God sees his covenant relationship with the Hebrew people as a marriage. They were slaves crying out in Egypt. He showed up. He redeemed them. He delivered them. He agreed to dwell among them in the center of the camp, provide food and water, provide protection, and promised them a great home and life. Thus, God made a covenant with them to be their God and they His people. Husband and wife. This literal covenant agreement came with a prenup that listed 10 major items. At the top of the list: “You’ll have no other gods.” Fidelity. Faithfulness. I redeem, save, provide, protect, and bless and in exchange I want you to honor me by being faithful to me.

So, when the boys from the Hebrew tribes willingly choose to be seduced, led astray, and shrug off the top item on their prenup with God, it’s not just a small thing.

And, the events of today’s chapter were not a random case of multicultural curiosity and innocent lust gone astray. The seduction was a Moabite plot rooted in the counsel of guess who? Balaam, the spiritual guru.

Fast forward to John’s Revelation at the end of the Great Story. In His dictated letter to the believers in the city of Pergamum, Jesus writes through John: “You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality.”

Balak was mad at Balaam for not cursing the Hebrews. Balaam offered the Moabite King some parting advice: “If you can’t curse them, corrupt them.”

So, as I meditate on these things in the quiet this morning, I find in the sordid and bloody Moabite seduction an apt spiritual reminder for myself. After all, Jesus carried the spiritual marriage metaphor forward. He is the bridegroom while I and all of my fellow believers are His bride. He came and paid the bride price with His own life to make an eternal covenant with me. He redeemed me, saved me, offered me protection, provision, blessing, and promise. I don’t want to be unfaithful and dishonor that love and commitment.

Yet Jesus warned His followers the night before His crucifixion that the enemy, while standing condemned, will never be idle. Jesus’ blood and sacrifice forever protect me from the enemies curse. But the enemy knows Balaam’s counsel: “If you can’t curse them. Corrupt them.”

As I think about entering another day of the journey in this fallen world, the sage voice of Obi-wan Kenobi just flit into my mind:

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…We must be cautious!”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Chapter-a-Day

Our Tent is Full

August 25, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“How beautiful are your tents, Jacob,
    your dwelling places, Israel!

“Like valleys they spread out,
    like gardens beside a river,
like aloes planted by the Lord,
    like cedars beside the waters.
Water will flow from their buckets;
    their seed will have abundant water.”
Numbers 24:5-7 (NIV)

Wendy and I are still amidst the slow process of addressing the contents of our lake house that was sold last December. This past weekend Wendy placed a shoebox on the kitchen island that contained all of the photos that we’d collected over 15 years and displayed on the walls there. I spent a little time digging through them. So many good times and memories with our family and dear friends. As Wendy and I paused to pray before breakfast yesterday, I felt a surge of gratitude for God’s goodness and blessing, and I expressed our thanks and praise.

Today’s chapter is a continuation of the story of Balak, King of Moab, and the spiritual guru for hire named Balaam whom he’s hired in hopes of cursing the Hebrew tribes camped in the wilderness and ensuring their defeat. Twice Balaam has gone through his pagan divination rituals only to have God demand from him a blessing for the Hebrews. Now, a third time, Balak demands a curse from the famous seer.

What’s interesting about this third oracle is that Balaam does not go through his normal pagan divination rituals. Instead, he “turned his face toward the wilderness” to look at the Hebrew camp. The Spirit of God comes upon him and he utters a word of prophecy like a true prophet of God and Israel. The Gentile pagan is used by God to bless His people, much like Zoroastrian astrologers from Persia showing up in Bethlehem to bless the infant Jesus with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. God is God. Throughout the Great Story God breaks standard operating procedures to use the most unlikely of individuals for His good purposes.

Balaam’s final message of blessing over Israel is fascinating when I meditate on the context. The Hebrew people are wanderers at this point in the story. They have no fortress. They have no palaces. They have no city walls or city gates. They are wayfaring strangers traveling through a wilderness of woe. But Balaam sees beauty in their tents, their tribes, and their families. The Hebrew people are a “garden” of goodness filled with a flowing abundance of love, joy, and shalom. Balaam sees the very thing God intended for His people all along and declared back at Mount Sinai before they set out. These people are different. God is with them. They are blessed.

As I meditate on these things in the quiet this morning, my mind wanders back to the photographs from fifteen years of family and friends at the lake. Good food, good drink, quiet conversations over coffee in the morning, laughter and the sharing of life over cigars and Scotch on the dock as the sun sets. So much love, joy, and shalom. Our tent was full of abundance of the things that matter most in life.

Our tent is still full of that goodness. Despite the fact that our season of having the lake house is over, our tent here in Pella is just as abundant with goodness. Just this past week Taylor and four of her girlfriends (and one baby girl), came to our house for a girls retreat. Wendy and I were so blessed to host them, to overhear their laughter and their tears as they made time to share life. In an hour or so Wendy and I will gather in the kitchen for our morning ritual of coffee, smoothies, the headlines, and the sharing of our lives together.

Shalom.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Ancient and Irrevocable

August 22, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“From the rocky peaks I see them,
    from the heights I view them.
I see a people who live apart
    and do not consider themselves one of the nations.
Who can count the dust of Jacob
    or number even a fourth of Israel?
Let me die the death of the righteous,
    and may my final end be like theirs!”
Numbers 23:9-10 (NIV)

The other day I was flipping through the channels and happened up on some kind of dating game in which the young men and women who were “in play” where identified on their name tags by their astrological signs. It took me all of a few seconds to realize that astrology played a role in determining the outcome of which young people would end up as couples. So funny to think how ancient belief systems still resonate in our modern world.

In ancient Mesopotamia, where our chapter-a-day trek finds the ancient Hebrews on the road through the wilderness, “seers” or “diviners” like Balaam were common. Every king had seers at his side to speak for the gods in “oracles.” It was believed that a seer could spiritually influence the gods and therefore the earthly outcome of battles and circumstances. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Balaam was a popular seer for hire, and he’s been hired at great cost to curse the Hebrews for Balak, the king of Moab.

Instead of cursing the Hebrews, God demands that Balaam offer a blessing, which Balaam subsequently does. Balak demands a prophetic mulligan, dropping his religious ball in a different location hoping for a better outcome. Again, Balaam offers a blessing rather than a curse.

A couple of thoughts on Balaam’s first two “oracles” or messages in today’s chapter:

First, “I see a people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations” speaks back to what God has been telling the people through Moses from the very beginning. They are going to be different. They are game changers. The priestly guidebook of Leviticus spoke of being a people unlike any other people, showing the world who God is and how God and His people operate differently.

Next, Balaam says, “Who can count the dust of Jacob or number even a fourth of Israel?” As Balak and Balaam view the Hebrew camp, it is so vast they can’t see it all. This echoes God’s promise to the childless Abraham and Sarah:

“I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

These wandering tribes are the literal fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham.

Moving on, Balaam finishes his first oracle by saying something curious: “Let me die the death of the righteous, and may my final end be like theirs!” The wealthy and famous guru for hire wants the eternal blessing God has graciously bestowed on the Hebrew people, but he doesn’t want to live the life of daily obedience and fidelity God has required of His people in Leviticus. It reminds me of many people I observe today who want little or nothing to do with living for God but they certainly want to go to heaven when they die.

Finally, in Balaam’s second oracle, he states “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.” God is in the midst of fulfilling His promise to Abraham. He’s authoring a Great Story and He isn’t changing His mind. Even a non-Jewish Gentile seer is left completely impotent in his own divination. He’s been hired to curse, but instead he is forced to bless.

In the quiet this morning, my heart and mind flits back to the astrological dating game and the reality that the ancient is very much present in our every day world. Thousands of years later, the Hebrew people and the nation of Israel find themselves in the same land, surrounded on all sides by enemies perpetually cursing them and hell bent on their annihilation. Over the past two years, the rise of global antisemitism has modern day seers spewing oracles and curses against the descendants of the very same people in the very same land. God continues to author the same Great Story. I just happen to be in a very different chapter.

I want to be a part of God’s irrevocable blessing and promise that even Balaam acknowledged in his oracle “cannot be changed.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Balak’s an Idiot (and so am I)

November 17, 2017 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

Then Balak’s anger burned against Balaam. He struck his hands together and said to him, “I summoned you to curse my enemies, but you have blessed themthese three times.”
Numbers 24:10 (NIV)

Yesterday morning, after writing my post and finishing my quiet time, I settled in at the breakfast table. Wendy was just finishing reading our previous chapter as she waited for me.

“Balak is an idiot,” she said with a chuckle and shake of her head.

I laughed, and agreed with her. The narrative clearly portrays the Moabite king as not being the sharpest tool in the shed. Balaam the seer clearly spoke the terms up front to Balak. He would say only what the Lord told him to say, no matter how much treasure Balak offered Balaam to say what he wanted to hear.

Nevertheless, Balak makes Balaam view the Hebrew encampment from three different vantage points, expecting Balaam’s prophetic message to change with the view. When the prophecy doesn’t change to his favor, Balak tells Balaam that he’s not going to pay. Duh. Balaam reminds Balak that he knew that up front.

It is out of Alcoholics Anonymous that we got the popular notion that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It appears Balak could have benefitted from the Twelve Steps.

In the quiet this morning, however, I’m reminded that I can often find my own reflection in the individuals I criticize. There are stretches of my own journey in which I was looped in endless cycles of brokenness. Truth be told, I have found that significant spiritual progress usually requires breaking systemic negative patterns of thought or behavior. The further you progress the deeper, more intimate, and less obvious those negative patterns are to the casual observer. Recovering Alcoholics will tell you that they once thought drinking was their problem. Journeying through the Twelve Steps you discover that your addiction is just the tip of the iceberg.

This morning as I laugh at King Balak’s idiocy, I have to humbly confess that I am also laughing at myself.

Have a good weekend, my friend.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Numbers 23

July 29, 2011 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

Balaam answered, “Don’t I have to be careful to say what God gives me to say?” Numbers 23:12 (MSG)

In my vocation, I’ve had the experience of presenting the results of surveys, resesarch projects, and assessments to many different clients and every level of an organization. It’s always fun when the results show satisfied customers, improvements in service performance, and strong overall results. When the news is not so good, however, it can be rather stressful. o one likes to hear bad news. But when the data reveals an outcome that the client will not be happy with, there’s not much I can do.

I identify with Balaam as he presents the results of his conversation with God to his client, Balak. What’s funny is that Balak’s response is the same as I get when I present data the client doesn’t like.

“Somethings got to be flawed in your methods.”
“Go and check it again. You have to have missed something.”
“Redo the survey. Call more customers. This can’t be right.”
“Kill the messenger!” (thankfully, I’ve never actually heard this one spoken, I’ve just sensed that my client was thinking it a few times)

I’m sure you can pay people to say what you want to hear, but the truth is a precious gift. When you know exactly where you stand you have an opportunity to make tactical decisions based on reality. Balaam was doing right by Balak to tell him the truth about God’s Message.

Speaking truthfully and honestly about what we know and/or feel can be difficult. However, when it’s done consistently and done well it may reap huge rewards for both the presenter and an audience who is open and receptive.