Now Balak is really upset. “Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all!”
Balaam says what we’re all thinking: “Did I not tell you, saying, ‘All the Lord speaks, that I must do’?” I tried to tell you …
But Balak really doesn’t get it. He keeps doing the same thing by the same principle and hoping that he’ll get a different result … one of the definitions of insanity, as I remember. “Please come, I will take you to another place; perhaps it will please God that you may curse them for me from there.”
Before Balaam speaks this time, however, the Bible says “he did not go at other times, to seek to use sorcery …” Meaning other times he did.
This time the perspective and place was from “the top of Peor, that overlooks the wasteland.” Balak wanted Balaam to see Israel from the midst of the wasteland.
As Balaam’s “eyes are opened” he declares:
“How lovely are your tents, O Jacob! Your dwellings, O Israel! Like valleys that stretch out, like gardens by the riverside, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters. He shall pour water from his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters.”
In other words, Balaam didn’t see a wasteland. His eyes were opened by God and he saw that, despite the wasteland they currently inhabited, Israel was wealthy and abundant, lying in valleys and gardens amidst trees with flowing waters.
I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling at times like the Lord has placed me in the middle of a wasteland. But God doesn’t see you defined by your situation. He sees you defined by what He has decided to bless you with. As Paul said, “having nothing yet possessing everything.”
There is a place where you might seem like you have nothing. But in God’s eyes, if you have Him in your midst, you have no lack. In fact, you possess everything in abundance and will have everything as you need it. This is true faith to see this.
Balaam ends with: “‘He (Israel) bows down, he lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who will rouse him?’ Blessed is he who curses you (Israel), and cursed is he who curses you.”
Again with the poking of the sleeping lion. We’ll see how it goes for Balak in the next and last oracle Balaam provides us.
Peace.