Numbers 11-14; 20-25; 27

When reading the Old Testament, I find it very helpful to remember that this book is a whole different style of scripture than any of our other standard works. 

Painting by Matthew Larson, used with permission

The New Testament is a history and testament of Jesus Christ's mission on the earth and the beginnings of the early Christian church. It includes the literal words of Christ, written by first-person or once-removed witnesses. It contains sermons given by Christ and letters written by His apostles that contain true doctrine that will lead to unity and happiness. Only one book in the New Testament is different than this: the Book of Revelation, which is totally symbolic and teaches of God's eternal plan for His children and Christ's role in saving the world from evil in a dream-like or story-like manner.

"Alma Baptizes in the Waters of Mormon," by Arnold Friberg, 

from Church Media Library

The Book of Mormon is a similar testament. It contains literal history and accurate doctrine taught by Jesus Christ and His prophets to this group of ancient Hebrews who migrated to the American continent during the time of Jeremiah. Many different authors contributed to the Book of Mormon over hundreds of years, each testifying of God's dealings in their lives from their own perspective. There are long, detailed stories of battles written by an army captain, sprinkled with truths of the gospel (Book of Alma). There are very short entries written by keepers of the records as they passed them on to the next keeper (Book of Omni). There are histories within histories, such as the adventures of a group who left the main body with false hope of a reconciliation with their enemies in their home land (Book of Alma). There is a translation of the long past history of a previous civilization that failed (Book of Ether). And there is an editor of much of the book (from Words of Mormon through the end). The Book of Mormon can be trusted as truth, historically and doctrinally. Whenever some anacronism (thing out of place with the time) appears and critics taut it as proof the book is fake, it is eventually proven to be correct (such as horses existing in ancient America). It does contain some chapters full of symbolism (Lehi's vision or passages quoted directly from Isaiah), but they are not the norm.

The Nauvoo Temple, my own photo

 The Doctrine and Covenants is mostly the words of Jesus Christ directly to the latter-day prophet, Joseph Smith, written by a scribe but without any other middle man. There are only a couple of chapters from other prophets' times at the end of the book. Most of the sections are words from Christ through Joseph Smith to specific people about specific circumstances involving the restoration of His Church and its management. There are sections that are direct answers to questions from individual saints. The whole thing is very literal, very straight-forward, very true.

Joseph Smith Statue at the Joseph Smith Building in Salt Lake City,

my photo (and my nieces)

The Pearl of Great Price is a collection of several different works. There are re-tellings of Old Testament stories with added material revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith as he studied the Bible in depth and through his lens as a seer (Books of Moses and Abraham). There is a copy of one chapter of the New Testament that has particular application to the latter days with President Smith's revelatory changes. There is an autobiographical account of Joseph Smith's call as a prophet, including his vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ. And there is the Articles of Faith, written by Joseph Smith.

Noah's Ark, by Edward Hicks, from Wikipedia

And then there's the Old Testament. It's a whole different type of scripture. The origin, writing and compilation of the Old Testament is hugely different than that of any other scripture book (with exceptions of those chapters of other scriptures that came from the Old Testament). 

• The Old Testament stories were not ever intended to tell an accurate, detailed history of a people. They were crafted, honed, and stylized not to be true, but to teach truths and to provide religious memory for a specific group of people, the Hebrews. If changing the literal numbers of things to highly symbolic numbers will carry the meaning better, the symbolic numbers will be chosen. (Think of 40 as "the necessary time for the trial" or 7 as "a godly, perfect, or complete amount." Think of 12 as a priesthood number, a quorum. Think of 4 as relating to earthy, temporal things.) Great events are exaggerated for effect. The number of Israelites who came out of Egypt, for example, is pretty wild and hard to imagine. As we know from our temple teachings, the story of Adam and Eve is allegorical (although Adam and Eve were real people) and we are to consider what it tells us about ourselves.
• The telling and subsequent recording of the Old Testament took place in a culture vastly different from most 21st century cultures on the earth today. To view the Old Testament as absolutely accurate would be to impose our culture upon theirs. Many of us today place a high value on telling the truth, but there are still cultures of the world where accuracy is not that important; conveying the value of something, the importance of a person, the moral of a story is way more important than accurate details. Today, a western political figure dealing with a Middle Eastern one will encounter problems if they assume that the two have the same understanding of truth or of contracts. A reader of the Old Testament can fall under a misunderstanding of religion and the nature of God Himself if they think of the Old Testament as factual.
• The Old Testament books were written long after the stories within them actually occurred. Very little of the Old Testament was written by a person who was alive and experienced the story. Maybe some of the prophetic writings would fall under this category, but not many. Mostly the stories were told and modified over many generations of illiterate but faithful people. 
• Religions were regional in the ancient world. Gods were connected to specific lands. If you moved, you left them behind and took on the gods of the place you moved to. But Jehovah was greater than that. He led the Israelites as they moved through the land. His goal was to help the people rather than rule over the land.
• The oral stories and instructions were written down by scribes when the Jews were forced out of Jerusalem by Babylon so that they could carry their religion with them. They were modified to fit the current state of the Hebrews, scattered all around the area with no centralized locus of religion. There is a lot of detail about sacrifices, which could be made on an altar anywhere, and very little detail about exactly what the temple ceremonies and practices entailed, once the temple was destroyed. Jehovah was (is) a God you could worship anywhere, if you knew about Him. The written stories provided the knowledge.
• The listener is to put himself or herself in the place of the characters of the story in order to apply them to their own lives. It doesn't matter whether Job was a real person who really experienced the losses listed in his book. It matters that you consider, "Would I be like Job? Would I handle the loss of everything I love and still be faithful to God?" That's the hope that the story is meant to convey.
• The Old Testament came from a people who had worshipped idols and whose neighbors all had multiple gods of their own creation. These gods were created in order for the people to understand their world and have hope for better things. All natural phenomena were viewed as acts of the gods. Every disease was viewed as a curse from a god. Every victory in a war was because of the support of a god. These gods were not understood to be all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful or even filled with love for their constituents. They were much more like the men who created them: angry, vindictive, petty. This environment influenced the way the Hebrews and their storytellers understood  Jehovah, the One True God. They expected that Jehovah took charge over every detail of life: every disease was a punishment, every victory was a reward. They could easily view Him as angry or jealous.
• Paul's statement that "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became [an adult] I put away childish things" (I Cor. 13:11 NKJV) applies to civilizations as well. They begin as children and collectively mature and develop if they learn from their experience and from the teachings of the more enlightened individuals in their group.The storytellers of the Old Testament were definitely more evolved in their relationship to God the Father and Jehovah than their neighbors were, but civilizations continued to evolve and understand God better through Book of Mormon times in America, through the New Testament with the physical presence and teachings of Jesus Christ, and now with the ongoing Restoration of All Things. 
• I like to think of the Old Testament as art. If you want to show exactly what someone or something looks like, you can come relatively close by taking a photograph or by painting a realistic portrait on sight. But if you want to express a feeling about a scene or an event, you might want to do an unrealistic painting.This is a heart-to-heart way to communicate and that is why so many people love the Impressionist artists such as Monet and Van Gogh. Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" does not accurately depict the night sky but it very accurately conveys a mood of glory and joy that one might experience in viewing a beautiful starry night. As another example, the first time I turned a corner in the Church History Museum and came face-to-face with the painting "For Us," by Walter Rane, I felt the Atonement in a way I never had before. That painting with its jagged, harsh stripes of red felt like pain, agony, suffering. I felt emotionally stabbed! (Here is a link to the painting, but without the texture of the brush strokes, it is not nearly as moving.)

The Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh, from Wikipedia

Let's apply these ideas to the story of the Balaam and the talking donkey, one of the weirdest stories in the Old Testament. It is found in Numbers 22. And it is surprisingly relevant to all of us today.

BALAAM AND HIS DONKEY

As the host of Israel passed through various already-inhabited lands, the local tribal leaders became very alarmed. They were afraid the Israelites would consume everything and force them out. When they reached the lands of Moab, the Moabite king Balak was terrified! He sent emissaries to a non-Hebrew "prophet" who was from Mesopotamia and who knew Jehovah. He asked Balaam to come and see him and put a curse upon the Israelites. Apparently, Balaam asked God if it was okay to go (he was offered a lot of riches, after all!) and was answered that he could go to see the Moabites, but he should not be influenced by their entreaties or bribes. He should only say what Jehovah told him to say.

Balaam said no to the messengers and sent them home, but when more powerful and impressive emissaries were sent, he really wanted to go. He was probably afraid to refuse such an entourage. He asked the Lord what he should do. Was the answer still the same? God still didn't want him to go, but He said, "Fine! If you want to do it so badly, then go!" (I remember my mom reacting this way once when I begged and begged her to let me go to a carnival and she thought it was a bad idea. I learned a lesson about how wise she was when I threw up all over the Tilt-a-Whirl ride, and later all over my friend's mom's car. All my money was wasted. Sometimes experience is the only effective teacher.) 

As Balaam journeyed along the way, Jehovah tried to discourage him from getting himself into an alliance with a powerful pagan leader. Balaam's donkey got spooked several times, refusing to go forward and even crushing Balaam's foot against a wall. Balaam got frustrated with the animal and beat her. Then he remembered the donkey's normal obedience and this communicated the message to him, "What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?" Balaam responded, "You have embarrassed me with your insolence! If I had a sword, I'd kill you!" Then the donkey seemed to say, "I don't usually act like this, do I? Have you considered there might be something unusual influencing me?"

Now let me interrupt the story right here and remind you of President Hugh B. Brown's very famous story about his conversation with a currant bush. It was part of a talk given at BYU in 1968 and has been repeated many times in General Conference and other venues, President Brown had been passed over for promotion in the military unfairly, just because he was a member of the Church. He was angry at God. But later, as he pruned a currant bush that was wildly overgrown in his own garden, a powerful connection was made in his mind. He felt the currant bush speak to him as he had spoken to God, angrily asking why it was being cut down. He felt God speaking to him as a gardener, telling him that he was being shaped for a different purpose. 

Now the talking donkey makes sense, doesn't it?

Balaam's eyes were opened after he considered this and he saw the purpose in the animal's behavior. He understood it as a warning from God, and he may have even seen an angel with a sword. The important part is that his imagination of the donkey's speech (or simply her braying) communicated God's message to him that this journey was wrong. And also that beating the messenger was wrong. God, through the angel, said to Balaam, "You can still go if you really want to, but you had better not say anything I don't tell you to say. That should be really, really clear in your mind right now."

When Balaam reached Moab, Balak, the tribal king, attempted to bribe and coerce him multiple times from multiple situations to curse the Israelites. Each time, not only was the answer the same from Jehovah, but the blessing he pronounced upon His people, the Israelites, became even greater. Each time, Balaam seemed to hope that this time, in this location, Jehovah would be willing to curse the Israelites and he would receive all the riches from the Moabite king. But each time, Jehovah remained the same: a loving, supportive God who always desired to bless His people. 

Finally, Balak panicked and said, "Okay, okay! Stop! It's fine if you don't want to curse them, but just don't say anything at all. I don't want them having any more blessings!"

Balaam said, "Remember how I told you that I would come, but I would only say what Jehovah told me to say? It's nothing personal, and it's not me being obstinate. I have to say what He tells me to say. He doesn't change." And he gave another, greater blessing.

Reading these blessings, especially in a version of the Bible that sets them apart from the story text (I like the English Standard Version), is a beautiful experience. It would have been wonderful to hear these blessings recited over and over by storytellers, just as it is wonderful to hear Elder Brown's story of the currant bush told over and over by many other storytellers. Each time our vision of God's plan for our individual lives is reinforced and our faith in Him grows.

This story is also a good one for those of us who ask God a question and are already hoping for a certain answer. If we remember that we "cannot go beyond the word of the Lord," we can more quickly accept that answer. If we try again and again, we may get a "Fine! Go ahead and do it!" answer and then have to suffer figurative bruises from our donkey along our path and not get the riches and glory we wanted from that answer anyway. We might find that to trust God's plan for us is better than to become a general in the army. Ultimately we may reach a dead end.

Remember the donkey and trust the first answer you receive from the Lord!

Donkey photo from Wikipedia