Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of Biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today is probably going to be one of my favorite episodes. I have wanted to get into the topic of donkeys in the Bible for quite a while now, and the other week, I was sitting in church, and I was watching the kids do their cute little presentation of the Nativity, and they had a moment where they made a little bit of a joke about Mary and Joseph riding on a donkey, and they said, oh, well, it's really a camel.
And so I thought, well, now is my time, now is my chance. I get to finally talk about donkeys because of the Nativity story, where there actually isn't a donkey. That's just a church tradition or some idea that we've imposed on the [00:01:00] story. There's no donkey actually in the text.
But of course, that meant that when I thought about it, and when I could get the episode out, the western Christmas tradition was already technically going to be passed, but we're still in the season before Epiphany, so I think we're all good .
We are going to be talking about donkeys and Genesis 3 of all passages, which I'm really excited about. And there's a whole lot of material here. We're going to be talking about donkeys from a zoological perspective, so that we can understand a little bit about the domestication, the types of donkeys, cousins to donkeys, things like that. We're going to talk about the ways that they show up in the Bible. We're going to discuss cultural and religious significance of donkeys in space and time, and we're going to talk about some difficult passages that have to do with donkeys. So I am super excited about [00:02:00] this.
Even though it really doesn't have anything to do with the nativity, the donkey in my own nativity that my mom made does have a donkey, and he's probably my favorite piece of the nativity because he's just adorable with his long ears and his big sad eyes. So I'm not going to suggest that we take out the donkeys in our nativity.
For those who are wondering, the idea of Mary riding a donkey is in early Christian writings outside of the canonical Gospels. In the Proto Gospel of James, which is a 2nd century text, it describes Joseph saddling a donkey for Mary to ride during their journey. And of course, donkeys were very common. They were practical for travel. And there is a connection with the Passion Week. So it kind of makes sense for people to stick a donkey in the Nativity as part of that, kind of book ending of Jesus's life here on earth. A [00:03:00] donkey probably would have been easier to acquire than a camel. They probably didn't have actual saddles, but they would frequently have a saddle cloth.
All right, but let's talk about domestication. The domestication of the donkey seems to have happened in Saudi Arabia around 4,000 BC. Donkeys were farm animals. They were used in caravans. And they were really good for desert travel because they could eat those tough grasses in the desert. And they often ate food that camels refused to eat.
We know that donkeys were in Mesopotamia as early as 3000 BC, being used by people. If you happen to be on Facebook and you are in my discussion group for my podcast, I actually put up a post with a whole bunch of cool pictures that I found that have to do with donkeys because it's really helpful to see the images and the ways [00:04:00] that people portrayed the use of donkeys.
Of course, we have Abraham, who carried the firewood for the sacrifice of Isaac on a donkey in Genesis 22. Donkeys are used as gifts in Genesis, like from Jacob to Esau. In the Joseph narratives, the sons of Jacob transport goods and food between Egypt and Canaan via donkey. And you continue throughout the biblical text, and donkeys are mentioned quite frequently in many ways.
Now I want to say a bit about domestication, because this is really interesting to me. Animals that humans hunted or managed were not necessarily the ones that ended up being domesticated. And there's a few reasons for that. First of all, in order to domesticate an animal, you have to domesticate a group of animals. While you can take just about any animal and perhaps tame [00:05:00] an individual of that species, in order to domesticate a group of animals, those animals need certain traits that will make them suitable for domestication.
First of all, the social behavior of the animal has to be based on a type of hierarchy of dominant and submissive individuals. That way, humans can insert themselves into that ranking as a leader. Second of all, the animal must not be adapted for instant flight. So, an animal like a gazelle, for instance, will not breed freely if they're penned up or herded too closely together, because they have that instinct of danger.
And so temperament is going to have a lot to do with whether or not an animal can be domesticated. Another trait is that an animal must be easy to tend, because if it's not going to be able to be tended in a group and easily managed, then [00:06:00] it's just going to be too difficult to domesticate.
And finally, an animal has to be responsive to human behavior, as well as probably human emotion. They have to understand human commands, human mood changes and facial expressions and other ways that humans communicate with the animal.
So an animal is determined as domesticated if its breeding, its territory, and its food supply are all controlled by humans. Some animals that we've domesticated have already been adapted well to meet our needs, so we don't do a whole lot of selective breeding there.
Now there's another type of domestication that is called commensalism. This is really interesting because it's actually one sided, and there's a dominant partner, in this case it's humans, and another species which benefits from the dominancy of humans. When humans settle down into [00:07:00] settlements, then there becomes a greater availability of food supply, there's a protection of predators that's natural to the animal, and a decrease in competition with other species. This is actually how pigeons and doves were domesticated. Pigeons and doves so heavily benefited from the presence of human settlements that they naturally became domesticated.
Now as far as the levels of domestication, there's primary domesticates. We have sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. A primary domesticated animal will produce a certain thing for human consumption. And at first, that thing is probably food. Sheep were not domesticated because of their wool, because a wild sheep does not have wool that's suitable for actually [00:08:00] spinning the wool. Their hair is very different from a domestic sheep's hair.
Now, you could say that they might have domesticated sheep because they give milk and you can have cheese. Things like that. Those kinds of products. But you have to think about the actual benefit it's giving, and the difficulty of keeping the animal. It's actually less helpful to keep a herd of sheep around just for cheese and milk.
And then you look at the archaeological evidence, and you can see that if a sheep is butchered, and it's butchered early on, then that means that, in all likelihood, it is being used for meat production, whereas if the sheep live a longer life, then they are probably being kept for milk or fur and other secondary products.
So then we have what is called the [00:09:00] secondary products revolution. This is a common argument that animal domestication happened in stages. So, first, the primary domesticates were domesticated for their meat, and then come things like milk or riding or, you know, use in plowing or use as pack animals. Those are secondary products. And so an animal like a donkey would fit into the secondary products revolution. They would not have been domesticated in the same way that sheep, and goats, and cattle, and pigs were domesticated because they simply are not as good at producing the meat that people are going to eat.
So once a certain level of domestication happened, then suddenly we have the ability and the knowledge and understanding to domesticate other creatures for other reasons other than immediate needs like meat. At least that is the [00:10:00] idea. There is a bit of criticism about this idea of primary and secondary domestication, because some of the secondary products may be of use quite early on. Although, like I said, the archaeological remains of sheep prove that they were being eaten first. We have butchering marks on the bones, we can tell the ages of the butchering, and you're not going to butcher young if they're being raised for milk and wool. Plus the wool that is most useful was selected for. And so they had to have been first domesticated for other reasons.
Okay, so, that's just some interesting background. Now let's talk about biblical terminology regarding donkeys and hybrids.
The most common term for a donkey Is Hamor. And again, I don't promise to pronounce Hebrew very well. So the Hebrew term Hamor probably does not include any [00:11:00] hybrids. It can apply to both genders, either a male or a female donkey.
And there's some really interesting things associated with this term Hamor. For instance, you might recognize that it's actually a name in Genesis. And we'll get to that later. In the Book of Judges, there's an interesting play on words with Samson and the jawbone.
Judges 15, 15 through 16 says, quote, He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, so he reached out and took it and killed a thousand men with it. Then Samson said, With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey I have killed a thousand men. End quote.
So there's a play on words here with the term Hamor. The words donkey and the words heap sound similar in Hebrew. And so the word heap here is referencing corpses, but it's probably also an insult, calling them [00:12:00] donkeys.
The second Hebrew term we're going to be talking about is the term Aton. This is used pretty frequently, and it's always used for a female donkey, otherwise known as a jenny. We have it in Numbers 22, and we know it's a female because it is used with grammatically feminine terms, and it's distinguished from a Hamor.
In Genesis 12 16, it says, quote, and gave him sheep, and oxen, and donkeys, and male and female servants, and female donkeys, and camels, end quote.
The term Jenny is used quite frequently for things like wealth and capital, and booty, and used as tribute, also as beasts of burden and human transport, and there's association with royalty, which the whole idea of donkeys [00:13:00] and royalty is interesting to us. Because to us, today, most of us think of horses as being a royal steed rather than a donkey, right? But there's going to be some distinction we're going to be taking out between donkeys and horses here in just a little bit.
Another hebrew term is ayir. And this is always a male. It's probably almost always a donkey, but it could possibly be a hybrid. And the reason we think it might be a hybrid is because it's qualified by the term " offspring of a Jenny," which, again, we'll talk a little bit about that later. The term ayir is never applied to a horse, although it may refer to an onager or a wild ass. And an interesting note here is that an ayir is not a foal or a colt.
This is actually a [00:14:00] misunderstanding of the term "offspring of a jenny." The Septuagint translation uses " young animal" to translate this word, but it's probably a bit of a misnomer. When we get to the Passion Week with Jesus, all of the Gospel writers use the Septuagint quoting of Zechariah, that uses "young animal" and only in Matthew and John is the term "donkey" actually specified.
So then we come to the term for a hybrid, or a mule. This is pered or pirdah. Now a mule is a combination of a jackass, a male donkey, and a mare, a female horse. We can't strictly rule out that it can refer to a hinny or a jennet, which is a cross between a horse stallion and a Jenny donkey, but the mule is definitely more common.
And again, [00:15:00] we have a kingly association with the mule, which is really interesting because of the prohibition against crossbreeding in Leviticus. And what's interesting is that when we look at the biblical text or other ancient Near Eastern literature, we can see the difference in time through which animals were preferred kingly mounts. In the 10th century BC, it was definitely the mule, which is really interesting because of the connections that we see in the Bible with this. And again, how did they get mules if crossbreeding is against the law?
In Leviticus 19, 19, it says, quote, You are to keep my statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together. End quote.
So how did they get mules? [00:16:00] Well, possibly they just didn't obey the command, but very likely they traded with other people who were breeding them. And a mule is sterile and it can't produce its own offspring, is going to be more valuable and more of a sign of luxury than a donkey or a horse.
So the last term we can talk about is a pere or an onager or wild ass. There's two principal species that we're talking about if we're talking about an onager. There's a Syrian species, and there's a Persian one. It's the only equid that is native to the Near East, but it's not an ancestor of the domestic donkey, even though they look very similar. And we know that because the offspring of an Asian donkey and an onager is sterile. But an Asian donkey and an African wild ass has a fertile offspring. The onager was never [00:17:00] domesticated because of its temperament. It was just unsuited to breeding in captivity. But we see a lot of indication that they were often hunted.
We have the term pere, which I mentioned, but there's a couple of other words that are associated with onagers. We have the term arad, which we see in Daniel 5, 21, which says, quote, He was also driven away from mankind, and his heart was made like that of the beasts. And his dwelling place was with the wild donkeys. He was given grass to eat like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until he recognized that the Most High God is ruler over the realm of mankind, and that he sets over it whomever he wishes. End quote.
We also have the term arod, which is used in Job 39, 5, and this is set in parallel with pere.
Job 39. 5 says, quote, Who sent [00:18:00] out the wild donkey free? And who loosed the bonds of the swift donkey? End quote.
. The onager has symbolism with it. It's independent. It's free. It's wild and untamed.
Now, we can't talk about donkeys without also talking about horses, at least to some degree, in contrast to donkeys. Domestic horses come from the Eurasian steppes, where it was first domesticated in the late Neolithic, and it was introduced into the Near East. And a Sumerian term for a horse is called a " donkey of the mountains."
Actually, the arrival of the horse coincides with the development of the chariot. This is a really important point when we're thinking about horses versus donkeys in the Ancient Near East. We have the idea of prehistoric horse nomads, right? And that was probably the [00:19:00] case in some places, but not in the Near East. In the Near East, the use of the horse was for drawing chariots. And horses weren't used widely by nomads until much later
interestingly, a horse cannot pull as well as a donkey because of its height and the way that its shoulders sit. A team of horses in the past could only be expected to pull about 1000 pounds in an ancient harness versus today, in a horse collar, they can pull over 5, 000 pounds.
So that just made donkeys and hybrids far more useful overall. Because the horse was for pulling chariots, which didn't require a whole lot of weight, horseback riding was pretty uncommon. And again, they didn't really have saddles in how we're thinking about saddles. They probably had saddle blankets, they probably used girths, but [00:20:00] when people started riding horses in the Ancient Near East, they probably started riding them in the same way that they rode a donkey. And they're just shaped differently, it just works differently.
Now in the Bible, we have a big contrast between donkeys and horses. Because of their association with the chariot, a horse was associated primarily with war. And both horses and donkeys were royal symbols because of their level of prestige. But we have a distinction between the humility and victory of a donkey versus the power and conquest of a horse.
There was a time in which horses weren't associated with kingship at all in the Middle Bronze Age. And instead, it was the mule. In 2 Samuel, for instance, we have David's sons who ride mules. In 1 Kings, we have Solomon who rode David's female mule. By the time of the Late Bronze Age, horses [00:21:00] do get that royal connection, especially regarding military contexts. In Egypt, during the New Kingdom, the horse became a potent symbol of royal power. We see images of pharaohs being drawn by horses. We have so many passages in scripture about horses with military contexts. Of course, we have Pharaoh who's chasing after the Israelites in the context of crossing the Red Sea. In Exodus 14 and 15, we have horses connected to the destruction of Pharaoh's army.
I want to give a little bit of understanding of how people in the ancient Near East saw donkeys. Of course, they were used as transportation. They were used for riders of high status. They were seen occasionally as divine mounts. And some of their characteristics are not uncommon to the way that we think of donkeys today. They were beasts of [00:22:00] burden, they were seen as lustful, or promiscuous, or very sexually potent. They were seen as stubborn and lazy. They were associated with divination. But then again, of course, a lot of animals are associated with divination. They are associated with lions as a contrast, either through speed or temperament. They were seen as very valuable. They were associated with sick or weak people because they could carry them, like from battle or something like that. They were occasionally associated with death. They were seen sometimes as a divine symbol. They were used as an extreme food source. It was not very common, it seems like. They were seen as stupid or without understanding.
Characteristics of a donkey that we really don't see show up in the Bible, but we do in other ancient Near Eastern texts, is that they have large [00:23:00] appetites, they're noisy, they're slow, they're stinky, and they're used for particular sacrifices and for a scapegoat ritual in Hittite culture.
Now, this is really interesting and going to be really relevant to some of what we're going to be talking about for our difficult Bible passages that we're going to be talking about here in a minute. Donkeys seem to have fulfilled a unique role that even more symbolically potent animals like the bull didn't really fill in Amorite culture.
Now, who are the Amorites? Well, the Amorites lived in Mesopotamia from about 2000 to 1600 BC. Their dynasties included Mari, from which we get a lot of ancient Near Eastern texts, up to Babylon. . They ruled most of the Levant and Mesopotamia, and even parts of Egypt. This is where we get [00:24:00] Hammurabi and his laws. He ruled during a high point of the Amorite period.
There's a lot of archaeology that we can talk about here, from Shechem, which is a really interesting connection there, and there's some connection with temples. We have one text where a priestess is referred to as a jenny and a temple is referred to as a donkey house. So clearly at some point donkeys had a really high status with the temple cult in some Amorite contexts.
Now, we don't have a whole lot of evidence that's widespread about donkey sacrifice. We do see it in Ugarit, though. It's not very often, but we do see it. We see descriptions of donkeys transporting deities and people of high status. In these texts, we have descriptions of really fancy preparation of gold and silver and beautiful blankets. [00:25:00] And there is one myth that has an extensive description of the donkey and its accoutrements.
In Ugarit, they are connected to dream omens. Before we talk about donkey sacrifice, I want to talk about historiolas. A historiola is a magical spell or an incantation that includes a short mythical and mythical meaning, associated with the gods, not just fiction. It has a short mythical narrative that provides the paradigm for the desired magical action in the spell. So it's got a little bit of a story to it, plus the spell. A Historiola is a type of sympathetic magic. There's a powerful protagonist in the story that is going to help show how and why the magic is going to work.
So in this Historiola from [00:26:00] Ugarit, we have a mare, and we don't know what kind of an equid this is. We don't know if it's a horse, or a wild donkey, or a regular donkey, we don't know. It's not really clear with the language. But this mare, or female donkey, or whatever it is, is the daughter of the divine being, Sapsu. Through her mother, the equid messages 12 deities because she wants to rid the land of venomous serpents. So that's an interesting connection with the equid and the serpent here. Horanu is the 12 deity she contacts and she gets her wish granted, and the venomous serpents are de venomified and then the story transitions to a marriage scene and the bride price is de venomized serpents.
So that's just a really interesting contact point here.
Now, as far as sacrifice. There [00:27:00] is a ritual of national unity that is found in a text. Now we have to be careful not to necessarily over associate it with Yam Kippur because there's no timeframe and there's no kipper or atonement being made, like the actual term there is not being used. But, this ritual of national unity does provide communion between humans and humans, and humans and the divine. There is an expiation of sin, and there is a sense of rectitude and this is where we find the donkey being used in the ritual.
A really interesting Hittite use of the donkey was as a scapegoat. This is the only place we see a donkey used as a scapegoat. And interestingly enough, you can actually use a clay donkey if you are poor. A scapegoat ritual is a [00:28:00] ritual where all of the sin or impurity of the area and the people are put upon the animal and it's released into the wilderness to carry it out. So it's bearing the sin or the iniquity or the impurity, sometimes disease and things like that, and it's carrying those things away from the people into the wilderness, to the wild deities out there, right?
Another really interesting context of the donkey in Hittite cultic culture is that in one text, we have a puppy described as a donkey. And the puppy is going to purify the king and queen. . It's a wave offering. So the puppy is waved over the king and queen. And this transfers whatever impurity to the puppy. And the puppy, again, he's described as a donkey in procreative [00:29:00] ways, and so I'm not going to read it because it's kind of explicit. But, the puppy is called a donkey, and then he is to carry off the evil from the king and queen.
Carey Griffel: Okay, so, one of the most amazing caches of texts we have from the ancient Near East is from the city of Mari. And in these texts, we do have donkeys mentioned. And these are very early texts. And the donkey is connected to treaty or covenant rituals.
Now let's talk about covenant or treaty rituals here for a second.
I am not a specialist in the field, but from what I've read, covenant and treaty sacrifices show up far earlier than purification sacrifices do. So I think that's very interesting, and I think that's very relevant to how we can see connections and [00:30:00] follow through in similarities in different kinds of sacrificial contexts. I say that because just because you see the same activity in different kinds of sacrifices doesn't mean that the same meaning exists in those places.
Alright, so let's talk about these specific texts here, in these Mari covenant treaty contracts. Let me go ahead and read the most famous example of one of these texts. It says, quote, I went in order to kill a jackass between the Hanians and Idamaras.A puppy and a goat they brought, but out of respect for my lord, a puppy and a goat I would not allow. A jackass, the offspring of a jenny, I caused to be killed. Peace between the Itenians and Idamaras I established. End quote.
[00:31:00] Okay, so there's a couple of points here. The jackass, which is a male donkey, the offspring of a jenny, it's presumed that it is clarified as the offspring of a jenny, to make sure that it is a purebred donkey rather than a mule.
We see this in Zechariah 9, verses 9 through 10. Quote, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and endowed with salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem. And the bow of war will be cut off and he will speak peace to the nations and his dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. End quote.'
Okay, so this [00:32:00] is the passage that is behind Jesus' triumphal entry on the donkey during the Passion Week. And you can see the contrast of the donkey with the horse. And so a lot of people will say, well, Jesus came on a donkey because he's humble and the donkey is humble. And that's not necessarily wrong, but the concept of humility here associated with the donkey is definitely peace, but it's a humility that is subservient to the deity, right? So it's like, you're trusting in God rather than military conquest. That's the type of humility we're talking about. Not just general humility, but humility that is connected to a way of conquest. And I think that really matters. And it seems like the expression [00:33:00] here is not that it's a young animal, necessarily. Although, like I said, the Septuagint does translate it that way. But rather it's a purebred offspring, as opposed to a hybrid.
Now back to covenant treaties and all of that, if we take the idea of the donkey as a royal symbol, then it makes sense that this official who is going to perform the sacrifice for his king is not going to allow another kind of substitute animal, but rather he's going to insist upon the purebred animal that is associated with kingship. And then, in the sacrifice, the animal is being killed.
Now this is really interesting and something I'm kind of still thinking about a lot, personally, because I really wonder if scholarship is on the right track exactly when we're [00:34:00] talking about sacrifice. Because when we look at sacrifice in the Old Testament, in particular, what you'll hear from many Christian pulpits is that the emphasis is on the death of the animal, which I think is the wrong kind of emphasis that we should have.
Because if the emphasis is on the death and the violent ending of the animal as a consequence of people's sin and impurity, well, there's just so, so many problems with that. We have problems with the fact that it's not just sin, but ritual impurity that is the problem. And so, what, are we supposed to assume that a mother who just gave birth is deserving of some sort of death? And so there's a lot of problems with ritual sacrifice, which just happens because of normal human life. And we can't associate that with sin and people [00:35:00] deserving of death, right?
And then you have things like, well, if the animal is being killed in place of the human who deserves death, then we're bringing death and sin and contamination into the holy place via its blood? There's a big disconnect there that makes no sense, okay.
So really what we should be looking at in the whole sacrificial system is the concept of life. And the life is in the blood, and the death is an incidental part of all of that kind of situation. You're having a fellowship meal with God, with the community as well, because it's not just every sacrifice that's burnt up to God. A lot of times the priests get to eat it. A lot of times the people get to eat it. And so the idea of sacrifice, which we've talked about before in the podcast, is one of fellowship and gifts and [00:36:00] offerings. And there is the idea of purification, right?
So then we go over to these covenant treaty rituals where we also have a death of an animal. And what does that mean? It can't mean the same thing that it means in the other sacrificial rites, because you're not purifying anything here. The most common explanation for these kinds of sacrifices is that the animal is killed because it represents the fate of the person in the covenant if they break the treaty, right?
So the king, who is represented by the donkey, if he breaks the treaty, he is going to be slaughtered like the donkey. That is the most common explanation in scholarship for what we see go on with a treaty ritual like this. And so then it's like well, how do you have one [00:37:00] kind of sacrifice that has an emphasis on death? And another kind of sacrifice that has an emphasis on life, how do you go from one to the other?
And this is just my own guess. I have no idea if there's scholarship out there that's going to agree with me or what, but, it seems to me that because treaty covenants are earlier than purification rites, that we don't necessarily have to take the meaning of one thing into the meaning of the other. Now, for all we know, the treaty ritual and its emphasis on death could be a backdrop for the later purification rituals, but in a polemic way, right? Instead of death, it's life.
But again, that's just me kind of giving an idea here because I haven't found anybody yet who has really [00:38:00] gone down this path of distinguishing treaty rituals from purification rituals because in a way, they look the same. But they can't be the same because there's really strong differences. Although a treaty ritual can still be connected to a temple and things like that because a god is going to be overseeing the ritual and what's going on there.
Alright, so we're going to go ahead and jump into some of our passages that we're going to be talking about. I have no idea how long this episode is going to be because I was so interested in studying about donkeys, and I can't even give you all of the information I have. Which by the way, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention at the beginning of the episode, my main book that I have been looking at regarding donkeys in the biblical world, and it's called Donkeys in the Biblical World. It's by Kenneth Way. He apparently [00:39:00] has a really strong reputation as the donkey guy, which I mean, I guess you would if that was your dissertation and kind of focus of your work in scholarship.
So for anyone interested in looking at the context of donkeys in the biblical world, I really highly recommend that book. It's fascinating to read if you just want to look at all of the details and the texts of the Ancient Near East and how they kind of talk about donkeys and all of the symbolism there, I really wish I could read a lot of that because I just think it's interesting. I don't have time to read all of those quotes that I would love to read.
All right, so I talked about the Hebrew term Hamor, and how it is used as a name in Genesis. This is the Shechem narrative from Genesis 33, 18, to the end of chapter 34. This is where they come to the city of Shechem. Jacob buys a piece of land from the hand of the sons [00:40:00] of Hamor, Shechem's father, for 100 pieces of money. So again, the word Hamor means donkey. And so what does this have to do with donkeys?
Now, we can't really definitively know, but Shechem is very connected to cultic significance in the Ancient Near East. There is a fortress temple at Shechem, and here they think it is the temple of Baal Berith that we see in the Book of Judges, which seems to connect back thematically to this incident at Shechem in Genesis.
Now, I'm not going to get into a whole lot of detail here, but it's really interesting that this is an important location for pre monarchy, ceremonial, cultic activity. In Genesis 12, 6 through 7, Abraham builds an altar. In Genesis 33, 20, jacob builds an altar to the God [00:41:00] of Israel. In Joshua 8, 30, Joshua builds an altar to Yahweh, the God of Israel. There is a covenantal renewal here. And it's connected to apostasy and the worship of Baal Berit, or Lord of the Covenant, in the Book of Judges.
Related themes here are making and breaking alliances. So, that sounds really similar to the donkey traditions and the killing a jackass treaty traditions of Mari. We have a temple that is actually located here. So this is partly where we get the idea of where scholarship is coming from in regards to the meaning of the slaughtering of the animal in a treaty covenant kind of a situation.
All right. I'm just going to leave that at there because we have several other texts to get to, but it's a very suggestive connection in a lot of ways. If you look [00:42:00] at Genesis 33 and you look at Judges 18, there's a lot of treaty language. There's a lot of talk about intermarriage and things like that. And so the idea of donkeys connected to covenant treaties in particular is really interesting, especially when we get to our next strange passage, which is the redemption of the donkey.
We see this first in Exodus 13, verse 13, which says, quote, But every first offspring of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb. But if you do not redeem it, Then you shall break its neck, and every firstborn of man among your sons, you shall redeem. End quote.
Okay, so that's really strange. Why does it say that they have to break the donkey's neck if they don't redeem it?
It's a really big [00:43:00] question. Let's look at a couple of related passages. It's mentioned again in Exodus 34 20, which says, quote, You shall redeem with a lamb the first offspring from a donkey. And if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before me empty handed. End quote.
Okay, so these two passages are very similar. Now you go into the Septuagint translation, and it doesn't actually mention the neck breaking. So, that's really interesting. It just leaves out the neck breaking part of it.
So one of our big questions is, why were donkeys signaled out amongst unclean animals for some neck breaking ritual here?
Well, one suggestion is that they just represent all unclean animals. This idea harmonizes Exodus 13, [00:44:00] 13 with Leviticus 27, 27 and Numbers 18, 15 through 16, which let me go ahead and read those passages.
Leviticus 27, 27 says, But if it is among the unclean animals, then he shall redeem it according to your valuation, and add to it one fifth of it. And if it is not redeemed, then it shall be sold according to your valuation.
Numbers 18 says something very similar, but the difference between these passages and the passages in Exodus with the donkey is that the donkey is to be redeemed by a sheep in Exodus, and Leviticus and Numbers both talk about redemption via money.
Another suggestion of why donkeys are singled out is just because of their high value. Or their symbolic relationship to people, because a donkey has a type of symbiotic relationship that many other [00:45:00] animals don't have.
There's even a suggestion that this is a remnant of an early worship of donkey sacrifice, which might be connected to the Genesis Shechem tradition. I don't know how likely that seems. Another idea is that maybe donkeys were the only current domestic unclean animal, but that's probably not the case because they probably had camels.
Another more likely suggestion is that they were associated with foreign cultic practice. That could be the case. We seem to have heathen practices as a backdrop to this chapter in Exodus 13, plus we have the connection with humans in this verse. So it could be that humans and donkeys were connected in a cultic way in pagan sacrifice.
Now, why the neck breaking? Well, it could be that redemption is supposed to be seen as a [00:46:00] very serious thing to do. So if you break the neck of a donkey, then it's going to be no good to anybody. It's no good for the person who has the donkey, because if the donkey is killed, then it's an unclean animal, it can't even be eaten.
But not only that, if the neck breaking ritual does not shed its blood, then that means that it's kind of an anti sacrifice, and it's leaving the blood in the body. So even if you're like, well, I'm gonna eat it anyway because I don't want it to go to waste, well, you're causing the eating of the animal to be an even greater offense because of the content of blood in it. The medieval Jewish commentator, Rashi said that the owner is depriving the priest of a sheep, so the owner will be deprived of the animal in its total.
We see neck breaking talked about twice more, [00:47:00] once for a heifer calf in Deuteronomy 21. Let me go ahead and read this passage.
Deuteronomy 21 verses one through four. If a slain person is found lying in the open country in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess and it is not known who has struck him, then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the slain one. It shall be that the city, which is nearest to the slain man, that is, the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd, which has not been worked, and which has not pulled in a yoke. And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which has not been plowed or sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley. End quote.
Okay, so that's just as strange as the neck breaking of the donkey, but quite interesting that it's connected to human death. [00:48:00] Right? I don't know what to say about that, but there seems to be something there.
Then we have a puppy in Isaiah 66, 3. Let me go ahead and read Isaiah 66, 3 through 4. Quote, But he who kills an ox is like one who slays a man. He who sacrifices a lamb is like one who breaks a dog's neck. He who offers a grain offering is like one who offers swine's blood. He who burns incense is like the one who blesses an idol, as they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations, so I will choose their punishments, and will bring on them what they dread. Because I called, but no one answered, I spoke, but they did not listen, and they did evil in my sight, and chose that in which I did not delight. End quote.
Okay, so first of all, how do we know it's a puppy? Well, there's no Hebrew word for puppy, but [00:49:00] we do have puppies with broken necks in Canaanite temples. We do have puppy sacrifice in Mari texts and Hittite rituals, and usually a sacrifice is going to be done with a young animal.
Now again, we have connection with the killing of a man here in Isaiah 66, and it seems like it's presenting this breaking of the dog's neck as a kind of anti ritual. There's no proper shedding of the blood, and so the people who are being talked about here in these verses are ones who are not doing according to what God wants. This isn't like an anti sacrifice in general passage, but people who are doing sacrifice in wrong ways or with the wrong heart or things like that.
Now, the neck breaking could possibly be decapitation instead of neck breaking. We see both in [00:50:00] archaeology, both for puppies and donkeys, by the way. We do have evidence of a broken neck in a donkey and a decapitated donkey in like equid burials associated with temples. And so there's cultic activity going on. But the decapitation would presume there would be bloodletting and maybe the blood would not remain in the body. So again, the decapitation is less of an option than the neck breaking.
Now, people will also say that it's really hard to break a donkey's neck, and that might be true, and that might be part of the point as well, like making it really difficult but also it's not impossible, especially if you have a young animal. It would be much easier to break the neck of a young donkey rather than a fully grown donkey.
Now, it's suggested that donkeys are unclean because of their role in Canaanite cults and things like that. And [00:51:00] as infrequent as donkey sacrifice seems to be in the ancient Near East, especially compared to other types of animals who are being sacrificed, the fact that they had such a high status of sacrifice, which would suggest that we would see them more infrequently, then you have all of these passages that are connecting donkeys with human sacrifice or the slaying of humans. It's all very suggestive of what the donkey would mean in the Ancient Near East, especially in a cultic situation.
I have other texts I could read if I had time about connections with donkey burials, and kings, and temple cults, and the archaeology behind those. Again, it's not very frequent, and you do have to take care to not presume that just because something shows up in one period of time, and in one area, that that means it's prevalent everywhere, [00:52:00] but there is wide enough archaeological and textual evidence that donkeys did have a high status in temple cults, even to the point of having a higher status than, say, your premier bull.
So, again, that's very interesting considering what we see with Jesus and his Passion Week as well. So, again, the royal connection, the connection with Jesus' Passion Week, and the purity of the animal, it's just these little details that get me really excited because then you can start thinking about connections and you don't want to go too crazy with it, right? Like, we can't over speculate when we don't have enough data and when it's really widely separated in time. And again, that's why I would put a caution in saying that the same things you can say about a treaty sacrifice are things you can say about a purification [00:53:00] sacrifice, for instance, because just because you have similar things doesn't mean there's the same kind of ideas there.
All right, but I promised we'd talk about donkeys and Genesis 3.
So, I mentioned the book, Donkeys in the Biblical World, by Kenneth Way. There's another thing I want to mention. This is a journal article from the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament from December 1994. This was written by George Savran, and it's called Beastly Speech, Intertextuality, Balaam's Ass, and the Garden of Eden.
This is a really cool journal article, you guys. This one you can find online, and if you're wondering what's the deal with the Balaam story in Numbers 22 through 24, I highly recommend this paper.
I'm not going to go into every little detail here, but [00:54:00] he gives a really cool outline of this passage in Numbers, and if you want a copy of what I've drawn up for that outline, I'm happy to send that to you. This passage from Numbers 22, 12 through 35, we have a pattern. It is called an X plus 1 story pattern, where you have something that's repetitive and the final encounter is a change and a climax to the story. So you actually have that in Genesis 1. Where you have the repetitive days and then a final day, which is change and climax of the story of day seven. So it's a pretty cool pattern.
And I would love to talk about this whole wide passage from numbers 21 through even 31. We certainly don't have time for that, but I will read a passage from Numbers 22. To set this up, what we have is the Israelites going [00:55:00] through Moab, and the king, Balak, is really worried about this. He's scared that the people of Israel are coming through, because they're very numerous, and he's scared of them.
So King Balak sends his messengers to Balaam, the son of Baor, at Pethor, and he asks Balaam through his messengers, which is really interesting, note the term messengers here, that Balak wants Balaam to curse the Israelites. And Balaam says, okay, let me see what I can do. He asks the messengers to spend the night and he'll get back to them in the morning.
Verse nine, God comes to Balaam and asks, Hey, who are these guys? And Balaam has a conversation with God. And God says, You know what? Don't go with them. I don't want you to curse them because they're blessed. So Balaam gets up and says to Balak's [00:56:00] messengers, Nope, I won't do it. And Balak again sends more people and says, Please come curse these people.
Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold. I could not do anything, either small or great, contrary to the command of the Lord my God.
And then he says, you guys stay here again tonight and I'm going to talk with God. And God comes and says, alright, go with them, but only the word which I speak to you shall you do. So then Balaam gets up and goes.
This is really interesting because Balaam says no I'm not gonna go and God says no don't go. Then God relents and says okay, you can go. And then what happens after this? I'm gonna read this passage with the angel and the donkey and Balaam
Starting in Numbers 22 verse 22. But God was angry because he was going and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the way as an [00:57:00] adversary against him. Now he was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand, the donkey turned off from the way and went into the field. But Balaam struck the donkey to turn her back into the way. Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow path of the vineyards, with a wall on this side and a wall on that side. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she pressed herself to the wall and pressed Balaam's foot against the wall, so he struck her again. The angel of the Lord went further and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn to the right hand or to the left. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she lay down under Balaam. So Balaam was angry and struck the donkey with his stick. And the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times? Then Balaam said to the donkey, Because you have made a mockery of [00:58:00] me. If there had been a sword in my hand, I would have killed you by now. The donkey said to Balaam, Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I ever been accustomed to do so to you? And he said, No. Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand, and he bowed all the way to the ground. The angel of the Lord said to him, Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way was contrary to me. But the donkey saw me, and turned aside from me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, I would surely have killed you just now, and let her live. Balaam said to the angel of the Lord, I have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing in the way against me. Now then, if it is displeasing to you, I will turn back. But the angel of the Lord said to Balaam, Go with the men, but [00:59:00] you shall speak only the word which I tell you. So, Balaam went along with the leaders of Balak. End quote.
Okay, I read up to verse 35 there. From verse 22 to 35 is where we have that X plus 1 structure there. The repetition of the angel with the donkey and Balaam several times before we reach the culmination.
Now, a lot of people will look at these passages and go, why is God seeming to change his mind here? What's up with that? We thought that God didn't change his mind.
Well, it's actually the case that God's apparent change of mind is a motif in the Pentateuch. We see God opposing after sending in Genesis 31 and 32 and in Exodus 4. So it's like, yes, God wanted him to go, but there was an issue to settle first. God needed to make sure that his point was being made.
And in [01:00:00] this paper that I've mentioned, Savran suggests that it's not a contradiction in God, but it's a contradiction in the man to understand his role and to actually perform it. The man in view in these passages needed something strong from God to tell him what he was to do.
And it's really interesting that this is one of the only positive portrayals of Balaam. We also see Kind of a positive portrayal in Micah 6, verse 5, I believe it is. But otherwise, we see a negative portrayal of Balaam. So what's up with that?
Well, it's clear from the other passages, that Balaam wasn't really intending to bless Israel, but probably to actually maybe curse them. Maybe he was going to be convinced to curse the people of God, and this was God putting his foot down and showing that the people could [01:01:00] not be cursed.
Now, what does this have to do with Genesis 3? Well, let's look at the themes that we have.
We have a theme of death. Balaam would have killed the Jenny if he hadn't seen the angel of the Lord, right? And the angel of the Lord said that he would have kept the Jenny alive and killed Balaam if he had to.
There's a suggestion here that Jenny had a special function as Yahweh's agent. She was used to remind Balaam that he really could only speak the words of Yahweh, as he had claimed previously, but was probably kind of being wishy washy or untruthful about that.
Let's look at these other themes that we see here. There's a clear pattern of seeing and vision. Balaam's first encounters with God are at night in relation to Balak's [01:02:00] messengers, and remember that the term angel is the term messenger. It's ironic that Balaam could talk to God at night, but he couldn't see the angel of the Lord during the day with the Jenny.
Now again, as many of you who listen to this podcast and who listen to Dr. Heiser's work know the angel of the Lord is a manifestation of God himself.
So, the encounters with the angel adversary is a counterpoint to the previous interaction with Balak's messengers, and it foreshadows what happens in chapters 23 and 24. In those chapters, there, we have Balaam who acts like the donkey. He gets led to different locations to see and to curse. But, he doesn't manage to curse.
We have a pattern with Balak's accusations of bad faith in Numbers 23, 11, and 24, [01:03:00] 10, that mirror the donkey's accusations against Balaam in verse 28 of chapter 22. The Jenny goes from a senseless beast to the obedient of Yahweh who can speak. And Balaam goes from a mercenary sorcerer to an exemplar prophet in spite of himself.
Now the theme of seeing has different levels to it, right? We have types of seeing. We have ordinary sight, or we have what Savran calls enhanced vision that reveals what is normally unseen. So now let's go to the garden narrative with the serpent and the woman. There is definitely seeing that's going on there, right? There is a divine agent, but this divine agent is not Yahweh's.
And so what is the source of the enhanced vision? In the garden, the enhanced vision or knowledge is obtained by [01:04:00] violation and trespass of God's command. The understanding there, that was gained, was unexpected. They understood that they were naked, and it led to curse and exile. But with Balaam, the angel of the Lord, who is God, is the source of vision and understanding, and the result is blessing and return to the land.
The anticipation in the garden for knowing everything is reversed by human limitation, and for Balaam, he accepts his human limitation and ends up blessing Israel.
Now let's look at Jenny versus Balaam himself. Jenny is able to see the angel of the Lord from the beginning. It's not until verse 31 that Balaam's eyes are opened, and he sees the limits of his own vision.
Unlike in the garden, he [01:05:00] doesn't move to sin, but he moves to obedience. Although he still probably doesn't quite get it, as we'll see in his oracles. Now, Balaam has to see in order to curse the people. This is probably connected to the idea of the evil eye in the ancient world.
With Balaam's oracles, they actually intensify as they go. We have more repetition plus one patterns here. I'm not going to read those oracles. But if you look at them, Israel is blessed in the last line of the first two oracles, the third oracle is entirely filled with promises, and the fourth is the final stage of Balaam's enlightenment. He goes from, I can't curse them, to, oh, I see that Israel has God's approval, to actually blessing Israel actively.
From Numbers 23 to Numbers [01:06:00] 24, we have Balaam, who takes up his oracle himself. Then we get to 24, verse 2, where he lifts up his eyes. And so that is less a dependence on what he is doing, as it is to what God is showing him. Now, finally, he has enhanced vision that he can see with his own eyes.
The Serpent in the Garden suggested the woman could control her own future by knowing all things and by being self sufficient from God. He offered control via magical influence and interaction with the divine, but this really led to a rejection of the divine.
But Savran says, quote, The Balaam narrative affirms the power of a different kind of knowledge from the Garden, exemplified by Balaam's realization in Numbers 24, 1 2. [01:07:00] This type of understanding goes hand in hand with blessing for Israel. End quote.
We also have a connection with divination between Genesis 3 and Numbers 22 through 24. The techniques of divination are subpar to a direct divine human relationship with God. The serpent in the garden, and the term nachash is connected to the term divination. These are two different words, they're not the same word, and we shouldn't conflate the two, right? The word is genuinely serpent and not divination in Genesis 3. but we have what scholars call syllipsis here, where we have two different words and there's an intertextual connection here.
And from Genesis 3 to the Book of Numbers, we can see that the source of the divine revelation is going to give different results. In [01:08:00] addition, Balaam has a rod in Numbers 22 that he beats the jenny with it. But as he's doing that, he's gaining no power from that action. Now, this rod is probably a diviner's rod.
There's different words that are used in different passages, but it's probably the same idea. In Exodus 4, we have the rod that is thrown on the ground, and it becomes a serpent. Interesting connection there. And Moses later goes on to ride a donkey with his staff in his hand. In Numbers 17, we have the rods of the leaders and Aaron's blooms.
In Hosea 4. 12, let me just go ahead and read this one because it's the same word that we see in Numbers.
Hosea 4. 12 says, quote, My people consult their wooden idol, and their diviner's wand informs them, for a spirit of harlotry has led them astray. And they have played the harlot, departing [01:09:00] from their God, end quote.
Okay, so the rod that Balaam is beating the Jenny with is probably this diviner's wand. And it's doing nothing, and if he continued to beat the Jenny and if she died, then he would have ended up dying.
Now, here's an interesting thing if we're thinking about snakes and donkeys. What do we have in Numbers 21, verses 4 through 9? That's the incident with the serpents who come and bite everyone, and Moses lifts up the bronze serpent, and if you look at it, then you're healed. So that's a type of sympathetic magic, and I have to think that it's connected.
Now, Savran doesn't think that it is. He says, quote, While its proximity to the Balaam story is tempting, the copper snake seems to have more to do with sympathetic healing than divination. End quote. [01:10:00]
Plus, he makes the point that there is a connection to Canaanite fertility cults with snakes.
And I'm reading that and I'm like, I'm sorry, what? You don't want to connect these two things because this is sympathetic healing in Numbers 21. But what is Numbers 22 through 24 about? It's about curse and blessing. So how is that not connected to sympathetic healing? And how is that not going to have some sort of connection to fertility cults? Because fertility cults are about fertility, which is the opposite of cursing. And the king of Moab is scared of the Israelites because of their numbers. And Balaam is going to bless the people to be more numerous. I don't see how that's not connected, I'm sorry, this, I can't see a better connection between these two things.
[01:11:00] And so, if you see this connection with the serpents in Numbers 21 and the donkey in Numbers 22, like, they're not, like, directly connected there, but they're so close in the text that I have to think that part of this is going to be a big callback to be like, hey, You guys, when you're reading this Balaam story, you should be thinking about the garden narrative and its connection there.
Because what we see in Numbers 22 is such a distinct difference in the character of Balaam than we see anywhere else in scripture. And he's mentioned frequently, and his death is mentioned, and there's this reversal of the donkey and Balaam, and Balaam is actually obedient in a time when he otherwise wouldn't be, and he is tempted by money from the king.
Like, there's so many connections here, that it seems like what we have [01:12:00] really going on is a reversal of the garden narrative in the Balaam story. And it's happening not because Balaam himself chose to do the right thing, but because the Angel of the Lord, who is the visible manifestation of God himself on earth, came down to talk to Balaam and actually interact with him and use his divine agent to influence Balaam to blessing instead of cursing and life instead of death.
I don't see better connections than anything. Like, I know that we should be a little bit hesitant to overly connect things thematically, but when you have so many thematic connections, you just have to go that direction.
When we look at the Jenny versus the snake, both of them talk easily, and that contrasts with the circumstances that they're in. Why do they speak? How do they speak? Is it just because, you know, animals in the garden were [01:13:00] able to speak? I don't think so. The snake is described as clever, and it seems to point to a source of power that is not God.
So, here in the garden, evil has an ambiguous source. It's not God. But the Jenny's speech is a gift from God himself, and she is his agent. There's a role reversal in the stories of Genesis 3 and Numbers 22. There's a difference in the intent, there's a difference in the relationship, there's a difference in the results, and there's a difference in the movement and direction. The garden incident leads to exile, and the incident in numbers leads to the people going into the land.
Savran makes so many cool points of connection here about obedience and repentance. There are two contests of wills here, in both stories, human and divine, as well as human and animal. [01:14:00] The woman in the garden doesn't try to communicate with God herself, but Balaam, for whatever reason, he does. Balaam ends up defying human authority, whereas the woman defies God's authority. Balak confronts Balaam like God confronts the humans.
In Numbers 23, 11 it says, quote, Then Balak said to Balaam, What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, but behold, you have actually blessed them. End quote.
It's not exactly the same as Genesis 3, but it's pretty close to Genesis 3, 13 that says, quote, Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate. End quote.
The woman casts blame, but Balaam, in this part of the story, consistently speaks only what the Lord places in his [01:15:00] mouth.
Now, people have wondered why the donkey is female. And I'm not sure Savran really takes this fully all the way, but it seems to me that Balaam is a type of Adam and Jenny is a type of Eve. Eve wasn't reluctant to engage the snake, but Balaam is reluctant. And Adam especially wasn't reluctant to take the fruit in the garden. So there's a very big contrast there. Balaam's encounter led him to see sin and disobedience. And he repented and submitted himself to his limitations and God's will. Now I think he still gets a bad rap because his motivation is still clearly bad. And the reason why things turned out well was because of God's direct influence and intervention.
Alright, I'm going to read a few more of these points that Savran brings out. There's a different intent in [01:16:00] both stories. The Jenny in Numbers, wants to clarify and not cause confusion. She is straightforward and honest. Her first question is protest and then is rhetorical, whereas the snake challenges the actual structure of the universe and God himself.
Both Jenny and the snake lead people astray, but the snake leads to death and the Jenny leads to life. Of course, there's different repercussions. The snake causes death and curse. The Jenny saves Balaam's life and shows that Israel is blessed. The snake's consequence is fair because his motivations were bad. The Jenny, however, was treated unfairly, and Balaam was probably unfairly saved.
There is knowledge given or acquired in both. The snake ends with an [01:17:00] angel with a fiery sword and exile, and the Jenny has an angel with a sword to prevent their departure.
Of course, we have a curse versus blessing. We have harmony versus disharmony. The snake causes disharmony and desires dominion and for humans to be at odds with one another and the divine, whereas the Jenny causes harmony between man and God and man in nature. And she frustrates the curse to dominate Israel.
In Numbers 22, Israel is still wandering, but it's to the land after the Exodus. And so that's a kind of anti exile. Balaam is saved from death and he works to protect Israel. There's a lot of garden imagery in the story of Balaam. There's trees and there's the idea of growth and fertility. There's an interesting connection as well with trees and [01:18:00] dust and locusts, one of the plagues from Egypt. Balak sees Israel's numbers as a threat, like the locust plague.
Alright, so I hope you guys are as excited about this passage now as I was when I learned all of this stuff. Suddenly, from being a really confusing, strange passage that I've never really heard anybody give a very good explanation for, it suddenly makes a whole lot of sense.
Now a final point is the idea of the nationalization of primeval history. This is what we see quite often. As Christians, we tend to look at the primeval history and think, well, it's just talking about the whole world, right? But, if you read the Bible as a narrative from beginning to end, the primeval history has everything to do with Israel and what happens with Jesus and all of that.
But there's two ways that you can read [01:19:00] things. You can read it diachronically, which means that you're just reading it from beginning to end, and in a diachronic reading, Numbers 22 as a type of reapplication of the story.
But you can also read it synchronically, and as synchronic reading is not a reinterpretation or an influence of the text from Genesis three, but rather as Savran says, it is a representation of the profound tension between universalism and the particular fate of Israel. End quote.
The universal curses are reversed in Balaam's blessings. But it's refersed for Israel. And does that just mean that only Israel gets blessed? Well, it doesn't mean that, because we see in places like Genesis 12, where the nation of Israel is meant to be a blessing to the [01:20:00] world.
And it's really interesting how we go from an ambiguous evil threat in Genesis 3 to a very specific threat in Numbers 22 to 24, where the evil is coming from a foreign king. And we see this also in Pharaoh's role as the snake and Israel's growth as the people in the land of Egypt. But it's not just the foreign king who is at play here, right? It's his deities and his allegiance to corrupt spiritual powers as well.
So what we have here in the story in Numbers 22 is an upside down version of Genesis 3, where this is how things should have gone, right? Instead of evil sneaking in and people aligning themselves with their desire and being tempted away from God, they are led to God by God himself.
Alright, I have so much [01:21:00] more I could say about donkeys and context here and all of these things, but I'm going to go ahead and start wrapping it up. I hope this was enlightening to you and that it encourages you to go to the passages that you're reading and that you think, why is this strange? Why does this seem like a contradiction here where God is telling Balaam to go and yet he's telling him not to go and then he tells him to go? Why is there apparent contradictions? What are these stories supposed to be telling me in the wide narrative of Scripture and what are these stories supposed to be telling us in thematic, contextual, theological ways that is going to help us understand our purpose here on earth and how God interacts with us. And how things are not supposed to be versus how things are supposed to be.
Quite often it's the small details that show us the point [01:22:00] of the narrative. The story of Balaam and his donkey is a type of reversal where the point that we're supposed to be seeing is that Balaam could only see and say what God wanted him to do. This is showing God's protection over Israel and the idea that even those who want to curse God's people will not be able to do that without God's permission, without a reason for that cursing.
Rather than seeing this story as just a story about a strange talking donkey, and wow, isn't that weird? We can see the thematic connections that are being made to point to a theological point. From the role reversals, to the enhanced sight that God can give that leads to obedience and repentance and blessing, this is what we can take away from these stories.
I hope that was really helpful. I hope that was [01:23:00] interesting to you. I sure had a lot of fun with this episode, even though we don't have a visible donkey in the nativity of Jesus. At any rate, next week we'll probably be back to talking about the book of Enoch. This time, talking about the Messiah in the Book of Enoch, and from there, we're going to be talking more about historical narratives, the Flood, but we're going to loop back into Genesis 1 through 3, time and time again. I promise, that's just going to keep happening forever. As we should, because it is the prologue to the rest of the story, and it does point to everything else that we see.
At any rate, thanks for listening. Thanks for joining me on Facebook or contacting me through my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com. Thank you guys to my financial supporters. You guys are awesome and really helpful. You help me get the resources that I need for doing what I do here.
Please go [01:24:00] ahead and check out my store. I have a store tab on my website. You can find stickers and mugs and artwork and other things like that. Probably in the future, you'll be seeing some donkeys showing up there.
But at any rate, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, or whatever holiday that you're at when you're listening to this later on. Thank you guys for listening and supporting me, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.
