“Balak said to him, ‘All right, come with me to another place where you can see them. You will see only some of them, not all; but you can curse them for me from there.’”-Numbers 23:13 Balak is a darn persistent fellow! If the sorcerer Balaam he has hired won’t curse Israel from one high […]

Yesterday I pondered the question of why God would allow Israel to use what was essentially a divining tool, the Urim and Thummim. The best answer I could give was that God sometimes adopts even the pagan things from the cultures we were born into and raised up in before coming into a relationship with […]

In my last post, I said “for those who trust God, His true prophets represent the end of magical omens and divination“. This brings to mind something in Torah that may seem to contradict this statement. Do you remember that Israel was permitted to use a divining tool for a period of time? I’m talking […]

As the story of Balaam and King Balak is so jam-packed with theological mystery and wonder, I have no choice but to wax philosophical a bit today. Following on the heels of yesterday’s post where we pondered the meaning of what Balaam meant when in speaking of Israel he proclaimed “…. a people that will […]

“Who has counted the dust of Ya‘akov or numbered the ashes of Israel? May I die as the righteous die! May my end be like theirs!” -Numbers 23:10 In Numbers Chapter 23, there are two oracles presented through the mouth of Balaam. The first oracle is from verses 7 to 10. The second oracle is […]