The reading for Sunday, February 12, 2023 , is Numbers 22 - 26

Numbers 22 - 26 

"Moabites said to the elders of Midian" I thought Moses' father-in-law was a priest of Midian. Would he have been among them? Or maybe Moses' father-in-law was still hanging out with the Israelites. 

The Moabites take the divination fee to Balaam hoping that a curse will help them to defeat the Israelites. It strikes me how seriously these cultures must have taken the power of a curse. 

Why does God tell Balaam to go with the Moabites (the second time) but then God is angry that Balaam goes?

The talking donkey reminds me to the talking animals in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series. 

This donkey makes a lot of sense. If something around us is suddenly acting very differently to us, it would be good to look into the reason. 

So, in Balaam's third message, it says that he did not resort to divination as he had at the other times. But the 1st 2 times, it says that Balaam spoke to the Lord. Balaam told Balak that Balaam could only speak what the Lord had said. I'm confused. 

Now we see where the Israelites begin to worship Baal instead of God. 

Now here is another plague. Stopped by Phinehas son of Eliazar the Priest executing a man and a Midianite woman. This sounds like vigilante justice to me. Was the Midianite woman here a prostitute for Baal maybe? I feel like we're missing something here. 

The second census shows that all the Israelites who had to die in the wilderness are now deceased. 




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