He could not curse what God had blessed. But his counsel found another way.
📖Based on Numbers 31:16
He had blessed Israel three times.
Each time Balak had moved him to a new location.
Each time, only blessings had come out.
Balak was furious.
He had paid for curses and received blessings.
Balaam told him: I cannot go beyond the command of the LORD.
He departed and went back to his place.
Balak went his way.
But Numbers 31 and Revelation 2 preserve something else.
While Israel was staying at Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab.
They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods.
The people ate and bowed down to their gods.
Twenty-four thousand people died in the resulting plague.
Revelation 2 says Balaam taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel.
So that they would eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.
He had found a different path to the same destination.
The curses hadn't worked.
The sword hadn't worked.
But women and feasts and slow integration with the surrounding culture — that worked.
He could not break what God was protecting by speaking against it.
But he knew that Israel could break it themselves if given the right temptation.
He knew the difference between an enemy that attacks from outside and a corruption that works from within.
The Israelites who died did not die from a Moabite army.
They died from choices they made at a feast.
Balaam's name became a word for corrupting the people of God from the inside.
What the sword couldn't accomplish.
Appetite did.
Scripture — Numbers 31:16
"Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD."
Reflection
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The direct attack failed. The indirect one succeeded. Spiritual corruption rarely announces itself as an attack.
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Balaam knew that a people who could not be cursed could still be compromised if they were enticed from within.