The Devil Made Us Do It

Dan McClellan (0:02)

In some of these other texts, like the Samaritan Pentateuch, and some Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, it's the angel of God that is saying, Balaam, psst, hey, wake up.

In Exodus 424, so this is where God confronts Moses at the motel six or whatever, and says, tries to kill him, and then his wife circumcises him and throws it at his feet and says, thou art a bloody husband unto me. In the Targumim and in the Septuagint, it's the angel that confronts Moses and tries to kill them. It's not God himself. So this is something that was done quite commonly anciently. And so my argument here is that this is God themselves who is confronting Balaam.

Dan Beecher (0:53)

I don't think that that helps me understand the story more, but it makes it more interesting.

Dan McClellan (0:58)

It just muddies the waters, yeah. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:05)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:07)

And evidently you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we try to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are you doing today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:21)

Rocking and rolling, baby. That's the best. Today's gonna be a fun one.

I'm kind of excited about today. We're gonna be just diving head first into some stuff on today's show.

Dan McClellan (1:31)

Yeah, it's gonna get interesting. That's for sure.

Dan Beecher (1:35)

Yeah, we're gonna start it off with a little chapter and verse.

And we're gonna do a story that I thought just had sort of one interesting element, but it turns out that it has stuff that like, when you read it carefully, you're like, wait, what's that? What's happening right there? So we're gonna dive into that. And then afterwards, we're gonna start a whole new segment about-

Dan McClellan (1:59)

It's gonna get weird.

Dan Beecher (2:00)

Yeah, about the evil one, the great Satan himself.

Dan McClellan (2:07)

Could it be Satan?

Dan Beecher (2:09)

Satan? All right.

But first chapter and verse.

Dan McClellan (2:17)

What are we looking at today?

Dan Beecher (2:18)

Well, today we're in numbers, numbers 22, to be specific.

Dan McClellan (2:24)

All right. That is a number.

Dan Beecher (2:26)

That's a number, there's lots of numbers. Almost an infinite number of numbers.

And I wanna give us some background. I'm actually gonna bury the lead here, or not bury the lead. I'm actually gonna just sort of spill the beans. We're talking about Balaam, we're talking about a talking donkey. And to be honest with you right now, the talking donkey is the least interesting part of this story to me now.

So yes, a donkey will talk, but there's so much more to it. And I wanted to start by giving us some background about what's happening. This is, and numbers is weird to me, we're back in the Exodus story. We're not in Exodus, but we're kind of rooted in that story. Am I right about that? We're sort of in the Moses leaving Israel, or rather Egypt story, correct?

Dan McClellan (3:21)

Yes, we are where they are kind of wandering. They're camped in the plains of Moab across the Jordan River from Jericho.

Dan Beecher (3:32)

And they are not just wandering, because you go back one, two chapters, they are slaughtering people as they go through. They are absolutely destroyed. They are committing mass genocides as they sort of plunder through this part of the world.

They've just defeated the Ammonites, is that right? And they are tearing through the land. They are a barbarian horde at this point. So now we cut from the Israelites to the Moabites, who have heard of this horde of Israelites who are just shredding through the world and had aimed directly at them. And they are justifiably, I think, very concerned.

So the Moabite king, who is King Balak, decides to send for Balaam, who seems to be the go-to guy for curses, for blessings, for communing with God.

Dan McClellan (5:02)

He's a bit of an itinerant blesser slash cursor. This is one of the things that prophets could be hired to do at the time, would be to show up and, we don't like these guys, throw some money at them and let them curse them.

Dan Beecher (5:21)

So the king sends emissaries with money to Balaam and says, hey, need you to curse these guys. We are in trouble. We might all die. Because to be clear, the last battle that the Israelites had, they left no one alive.

Dan McClellan (5:39)

Yeah, I think that's actually the Amorites, isn't it? And then Balak hears what has happened to the Amorites.