Scripture Daily

Context No. 641 of 4322 · Numbers

Context · Reflection

Numbers 23:1-5: in context

1Balaam said to Balak, “Build here seven altars for me, and prepare here seven bulls and seven rams for me.” 2Balak did as Balaam had spoken; and Balak and Balaam offered on every altar a bull and a ram. 3Balaam said to Balak, “Stand by your burnt offering, and I will go. Perhaps the LORD will come to meet me. Whatever he shows me I will tell you.” He went to a bare height. 4God met Balaam, and he said to him, “I have prepared the seven altars, and I have offered up a bull and a ram on every altar.” 5The LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth, and said, “Return to Balak, and thus you shall speak.”

Balak, the king of Moab, is terrified of Israel, so he hires Balaam, a famous diviner, to curse them. They build seven altars, offer bulls and rams, and Balaam goes off to seek a word to hurl against God's people. But watch the quiet sentence that undoes the entire scheme: the LORD put a word in Balaam's mouth, and said, return to Balak, and this is what you shall speak. Balaam has been paid to curse; Balak is standing by his altars waiting for the curse; and when Balaam opens his mouth, only what God has put there comes out, and God, as the next chapters show, turns every attempted curse into a blessing on Israel. The hired curse is overruled at the source.

There is deep reassurance buried in that. Here is a determined enemy, spending real money, performing elaborate rituals, employing a professional to call down harm on God's people, and none of it can touch them, because God controls even the words in the mouth of the man hired to curse. Elsewhere Scripture says it plainly: God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because he loved you. The malice was real, the effort was real, the intent to harm was real, and it was all bent, against the enemy's will, into good for the people God loved. No curse commissioned against them could stand.

That steadies me when I sense ill-will aimed my way, the schemes, the hostile words, the people who wish me harm and work for it. As one of God's own, I am tempted to fear such things as though they held real power over my life. Balaam's overruled curse says otherwise: God can put his own word in the mouth of my adversary and turn the intended harm into blessing. Do I fear the ill-will and schemes directed against me as if they could finally curse my life, when the God who loves me can overrule even a hired curse and bend it into blessing?

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