Balaam & Balak

Balaam's talking donkey.

Central Truth: God can speak to humans in many different ways to communicate his message.

Scriptures: Numbers 22:23; 24; Revelations 2:14

After the Israelites defeated the two Amorite kings and their armies, they camped in the lands that they had conquered, which alarmed the Balak, the king of Moab. Bala hired Balaam, a magician from Pethor, a city on the Euphrates River, to come and curse the Israelites. God forbade Balaam to go to Balak, but Balaam disobeyed God and went. Nevertheless, God prevented Balaam from cursing Israel. Instead, Balaam blessed Israel because he could only speak as God directed him. 

The next morning, Balaam saddled his donkey and went with the messengers from Balak. The Lord was angry with him and the angel of the Lord stood in the way with a sword. Three times the angel stood to kill Balaam, and three times the donkey balked when she saw the angel. Balaam struck the donkey three times. The Lord then opened the mouth of the donkey, and the donkey asked Balaam why he had struck her but Balaam threatened to kill the poor donkey. Then the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes and he saw the angel of the Lord holding his sword. The angel told Balaam that he would have killed him these three times had it not been for the donkey.

Balaam was not an Israelite, but he knew enough about God to obey him. He thought he could influence God by offering sacrifices but failed. Since Balaam was greedy, he did advise Balak how to tempt the Israelites so that God would curse them by sending women to entice the men to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sins. Later, however, the Israelites warred with the Midianites and Balaam was killed.

Bible Scrapbook

This week we started a new project! Bible journaling and scrapbooking is a very popular thing of studying the word of God while being creative. We drew a mountain to represent the high places used to bless the Israelites. I found a cute free to use donkey picture to include with a speech bubble. Each child chose what the donkey said and we glued them into our scrapbook along with a map of where the story took place in the Holy Land. Next week we will finish with some bullet notes about the area.

Scrapbooks!