Seven Altars, Four Oracles, and a Donkey That Sees

The Balaam narrative is built as a repeating procedure that fails three times and then breaks. Balak takes the diviner to a high place from which part of Israel is visible, seven altars are built, seven bulls and seven rams offered, Balaam withdraws, and comes back with words. Each time the words are a blessing. Balak moves him to a different vantage on the theory that a different view will produce a different result, and the sequence runs again. The fourth oracle is given unbidden and goes furthest, speaking of a star coming out of Jacob and a sceptre out of Israel, a line later read messianically in both Jewish and Christian tradition and quoted at Qumran.

The road scene that precedes it is written as comedy and its joke is theological. A professional seer, hired for his sight, rides an animal that can see the angel standing in the way with a drawn sword while he cannot. The donkey turns aside into a field, crushes his foot against a wall, and finally lies down under him, and he beats her three times. Then she speaks, and asks whether she has ever behaved this way before. Only afterwards are his own eyes opened.

Together the two halves make a single argument: a diviner is not a man who can compel a god, and a man who takes payment for oracles may find he can produce only what he is given, in front of the client who is paying.