Balaam — The Sorcerer Hired to Curse God's People

Balaam, son of Beor, is one of the strangest figures in the Bible. Most people remember only the talking donkey. But the donkey is actually the least strange part of the story. Balaam was a professional diviner with a regional reputation. Balak, the king of Moab, sent a delegation across the desert and paid him in gold—not to bless, but to curse. One man whose words, people believed, could destroy an entire nation before it ever drew a sword. In this video, we take a slow, careful look at three chapters of the Book of Numbers. We return to the ancient world, where a curse was regarded as a real weapon, and to an inscription written on plaster, discovered in Jordan in 1967, in which the name Balaam, son of Beor, appears in a non-Israelite text written by the peoples of his own region. He was not invented by the authors of Numbers. He was already a figure of regional legend. The curses failed. Every one of them was turned by God into a blessing while the words were still in Balaam’s mouth. But the story does not end there. After every curse had failed, Balaam gave advice. And that advice killed more Israelites than any curse ever could. That is what this video is about: why the man hired to curse Israel ultimately caused the greatest damage—not through spoken curses, but through a quiet strategic whisper.