If you recall from last time, King Balak is really afraid of those Israelite foreigners. He's worried about what those refugees will do to his people and his land and ends up making some rash decisions. Decisions that seem to ignore history and logic and education. If only this story were relevant to today.
He asks Balaam, a man who's name is annoyingly similar to Balak, and yes that was confusing for me, to curse them. Balaam checks in with God and learns that the Israelites are God's chosen people. He tries to tell King Balak that he cannot help him out but Balak isn't good at understanding things.
In this chapter, Balaam goes to Balak and asks that the king build 7 altars to sacrifice 7 bulls and 7 rams. Balaam tells Balak to chill out, he's just got to go talk to God for a sec. God gives Balaam a boring poem to read to King Balak, which blesses the Israelite people and makes them uncursable. King Balak is not pleased with this betrayal, but suggests:
"Come with me, please, to another place where you'll see them. You'll see only part of them. You won't see all of them. Then curse them for me from there."
Balak provides another 7 altars, 7 rams, and 7 bulls to sacrifice. Balaam tells him to wait a minute while he talks to God again then comes back and says another creepy poem to bless the Israelite people. King Balak is super bummed out about getting betrayed a second time. What does he suggest next you ask?
"Please come and I'll take you to another place. Perhaps God will prefer it, so that you could curse him for me from there."
Can you guess what happens next?
King Balak's all "Why would you do this to me? I am so very surprised that after telling me several times that you could not curse the Israelite people, and after blessing them these two times, that you would betray me a third time. I really thought you'd change your mind the third time."
And Balaam's all "I literally couldn't have made my intentions any clearer."
Chapter 24:
God comes down to tell say some creepy stuff about how he's going to break people's bones and devour nations and describes himself as a lion and also a lioness because God doesn't believe in having only one gender identity which is cool and progressive if it weren't for the bone breaking and nation devouring. He/She says that Balaam will be blessed and King Balak will be cursed.
Balak gets super pissed and is all "I can't believe you betrayed me like this."
Balaam's all "I can't believe you still can't believe I didn't do the thing I kept telling you I couldn't do literally over and over again."
Balaam thing goes on to predict the demise of Balaam's people as the Israelites get closer.
I have to say, I know Balak's super dumb, but I really thought he would have punished Balaam for screwing him over. All he did was send him home He's pretty merciful, unlike SOME lionesses I know.
No comments:
Post a Comment