BALAK, BALAAM AND THE SPIRITUAL LESSONS

I want to tell you a story. Long, long time ago, about 1250 years before Jesus was born, far away in the desert of Zin which is not far from the Suez Canal that separated Africa from the Middle East, there was a group of people who was fleeing from slavery and looking for a promised land. These people were called Israelites or The Sons of Israel. They needed to pass through Kri-Hareseth and Dibon which were districts in Moab, a then powerful country. But Balak king of Moab would not allow the Israelites pass through his country because he was both suspicious and afraid of the Israelites. Knowing that the Israelites would insist on passing through his country by force, he sent words to one soothsayer-prophet called Balaam, asking him to come and curse the Israelites for him. This is how he put it: “Look, a people coming from Egypt has overrun the whole countryside; they have halted at my doorstep. I beg you come and curse this people for me, for they are stronger than I am. We may then be able to defeat them and drive them out of the country. For this I know: anyone you bless is blessed, anyone you curse is accursed.”

Well, Balaam agreed to go with Balak’s envoy but he insisted that it was on the condition that he will do only what Yahweh commands him to do. He told the messengers Balak sent: “Even if Balak gives me the sun and the moon, I can not go against the orders of Yahweh my God… How can I curse someone whom God has not cursed, how denounce someone whom God has not denounced?” Three times Balak urged Balaam to curse the Israelites, offering at each occasion, a burnt-offering of seven bulls and seven rams. But all these came to nothing: Balaam continued to bless rather than curse.

Balak was frustrated, the people of Israelites were stronger than him and the soothsayer would not curse them. God has blessed them, no enemy can hurt them; they were chosen, they were favoured, no weapon fashioned against them would prosper.

But Balak did not give up. He rather changed his tactics. “If I can get them to anger this their God”, he said to himself, “if I can get them to sin against this God that protects them and gives them strength and victory, then they will not be as powerful and I can fight and defeat them.” So he called a secret meeting of all the women of Moab. He advised them to go to the camp of the Israelites and seduce their men to sin with them and lure them into worshipping Baal. The plan worked well. God was very angry with the Israelites that he allowed a disastrous plague to come on them and 24,000 of them died as a result. And that is the end of my story. See Numbers 21-24; 31:6 for more details.

The moral of the story is that our enemy, the devil has no power to harm us as far as God is with us and as far as we remain faithful to God. Now the Devil knows this very well so he uses tactics 2, which is to get us sin against God, to create enmity between us and God, to alienate us from God. So he sends us temptations just as Balak did to the Israelites, we who like the Israelites are on our journey to the Promised Land (heaven). He knows that if he succeeds in making us fall out of grace with God, he will be able to deal with us almost as he wills.

The sole aim of the devil, the worst that the devil can do is to see the righteous fall out of favour with God. It is for us therefore to take care so that we don’t fall into the trickery of the devil. It is for us to stand up to him strong in faith. I tell you this story not only because I want you to be holy but also because I want you to persevere in holiness and to realize that that is the best state to be in. and may the Holy Spirit help you to understand what these words mean.

(This is an extract from my letter written JSS 2 Students of Ss Simon and Jude Seminary, Kuje, Abuja)