QFD | The Way of Balaam

The Way of Balaam

A Devotional on Jude 11 and Numbers 22–31

“Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.”

— Jude 11 (ESV)

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The most dangerous threat to the people of God has never come from the outside. The consistent pattern of Scripture—Old Testament and New—is that God’s people are most vulnerable when the corruption starts from within. When someone who knows the language of faith uses it to lead the faithful somewhere the text does not go.

Jude understood this. In one chapter and twenty-five verses, he names three men from Israel’s history as warnings: Cain, Balaam, Korah. Every one of them operated inside the community of God’s people. We need to look at the middle name.

The Man Behind the Donkey

Most of us remember the donkey and forget the rest. But the New Testament writers don’t bring Balaam up because of the donkey. They bring him up because of what he did after.

The short version: Balak, king of Moab, hires Balaam to curse Israel. God tells Balaam plainly, “You shall not go with them. You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed” (Numbers 22:12, ESV). Balaam says no. Good. But when Balak sends a bigger delegation with a bigger offer, Balaam gives a noble-sounding answer—“Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the LORD my God” (Numbers 22:18, ESV)—and then immediately asks God again. “That I may know what more the LORD will say to me” (Numbers 22:19, ESV).

God already said no. Balaam went back to check. Not because he didn’t hear—because he didn’t like the answer. Think about it. How many times have we watched someone do exactly that with Scripture?

On the road, the angel of the LORD stands with a drawn sword, and a donkey sees what the prophet cannot. A beast of burden had better spiritual perception than a man of God. When your heart is set on gain—when you have already decided what you want the answer to be—you lose the ability to see what God puts right in front of you.

The Strategy That Worked

Three times Balaam opens his mouth to curse Israel. Three times God turns the curse into blessing. Balaam cannot overpower what God has blessed. So he finds another way.

Numbers 31:16—Moses reveals it: “Behold, these, on Balaam’s advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the LORD in the incident of Peor.” Balaam counseled Balak to corrupt Israel from the inside—send your women, invite them to your feasts, get them to the table of idols. God’s own holiness would do the rest. Twenty-four thousand died in the plague that followed (Numbers 25:1–3, 9).

I don’t know how to soften that. He weaponized God’s holiness against God’s people. And he did it for money.

Three Witnesses, One Pattern

Jude calls it “Balaam’s error”—people who “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (Jude 4, ESV). They take the gift and twist it into permission. Peter calls it “the way of Balaam”—those who forsook “the right way” because they “loved gain from wrongdoing” (2 Peter 2:15, ESV). And Jesus says to the church at Pergamum: “You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam” (Revelation 2:14, ESV). To a church. Not the world. A congregation.

What does this look like now? It looks like the person who says, “I know what the Bible says, but don’t you think God is bigger than that?” It looks like the teacher who slowly replaces “the text says” with “I feel like God wouldn’t.” It looks like the drift where we stop asking “Is this authorized?” and start asking “Is this really that bad?”

The gain does not have to be silver. It can be approval. Relevance. The desire to not seem out of step with the world. Maybe that’s too close to home. Maybe it should be.

The Warning and the Way Back

Balaam’s story ends in judgment—his road ran out (Numbers 31:8). But we are not Balaam. The danger Jude warns about is not the stumble—it is the pattern, the abandonment to error. And yet John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, ESV). And if anyone does sin, “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1, ESV). The warning and the assurance live in the same breath.

Balaam could not curse what God had blessed. No one can. But they can teach God’s people to curse themselves—by compromising what the blessing required of them. There is a right way. The question for every congregation, and every person in it, is whether we are walking it.

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Textual Grounding

Old Testament: Numbers 22:12, 18–19; 25:1–3, 9; 31:8, 16

New Testament: Jude 4, 11; 2 Peter 2:15; Revelation 2:14; 1 John 1:9; 2:1

Translation: English Standard Version (ESV)