Balaam Went Willingly and That Was His Undoing

The last thing God did before letting Balaam walk to his death was hide from him that he was walking to his death.

This is not cruelty. It is a pattern, and the Midrash Tanchuma, compiled in the fifth century CE, explains both texts side by side. In (Job 33:15-17), the verse says: “In a dream, a vision of the night, He uncovers a human ear, to turn a person from an action and conceal pride from a man.” The Tanchuma asks what it means to “conceal” from a man. It means God hid from Balaam that the journey to Balak would “obliterate him from the world and bring him to the grave.”

Midrash Tanchuma, Balak 7 adds a second principle drawn from Proverbs: “when someone is going to sin, Ha-Satan dances before him until he completes the transgression.” Ha-Satan, the heavenly Accuser who works within God’s court as a prosecutor and tester, clears the path. He makes the road look open, the plan look sound, the choice look free. As soon as the transgression is complete, he returns to deliver his report. The sinner, Proverbs says, goes “like an ox to the slaughter, until an arrow pierces his liver” (Proverbs 7:22-23). The arrow was already there. The ox did not know.

Balaam had been told once already: do not go with them (Numbers 22:12). He had been denied and had pushed back, lobbied, stalled. When the second delegation from Balak arrived, God permitted him to go, with a condition: “only the thing that I tell you are you to do.” That permission, the Tanchuma makes clear, was not approval. It was the divine principle that a person is led down the path they themselves have chosen to walk.

What happened next tells you everything about Balaam’s real motivation. He rose early in the morning, saddled his own donkey, and set out before dawn. He had servants. He could have waited. He could have let someone else saddle the animal. He did it himself, before anyone else was awake, because his hatred for Israel was so strong he could not let even a few extra minutes stand between him and departure. God watched this and said: “You wicked man, their ancestor Abraham has already anticipated you at the binding of his son Isaac” (Genesis 22:3). Abraham rose early and saddled his donkey with identical urgency. But Abraham was hurrying toward an act of devotion that would cost him everything he loved. Balaam was hurrying toward an act of destruction that would cost him his life.

God’s anger was kindled because Balaam “was going.” Not because he was disobedient, since he had been given permission. But because “he was glad at the tribulation of Israel.” The Tanchuma catches this in the phrase “he went with the princes of Moab” (Numbers 22:21). The rabbis read “with them” as a psychological statement: he was on their side emotionally. He shared their purpose. He had not been conscripted. He was enthusiastic.

God had warned him. Ha-Satan had cleared the road. Balaam had chosen eagerly, with his own hands on the saddle in the darkness before dawn. And God, who “does not desire the death of the wicked,” had hidden from him the end of the road long enough for the choice to be entirely Balaam’s own.

By the time Balaam understood, he had already gone. He would later beg for his soul, saying “let my soul die the death of the righteous” (Numbers 23:10). But the Tanchuma notes the timing: he asked for a righteous death only after he had destroyed his soul trying to earn an unrighteous one. The ox, having passed the threshold, realized what kind of slaughter it was. Too late.