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I. PERVERSION OF GREAT GIFTS.

1. By turning them to purposes of self-aggrandisement. Balak struck the keynote of his character when he said, "Am I not able to promote thee unto honour?" Herein, then, lies the first perversion of glorious gifts: that Balaam sought not God's honour, but his own.

2. By making those gifts subservient to his own greed.

II. PERVERSION OF CONSCIENCE.

1. The first intimation we have of the fact that Balaam was tampering with his conscience, is in his second appeal to God. There is nothing like the first glance we get at duty, before there has been any special pleading of our affections or inclinations. Duty is never uncertain at first. It is only after we have got involved in the sophistries of wishing that things were otherwise than they are that it seems indistinct. Considering a duty is often only explaining it away. Deliberation is often only dishonesty. God's guidance is plain, when we are true.

2. The second stage is a state of hideous contradictions: God permits Balaam to go, and then is angry with him for going. There is nothing here which cannot be interpreted by bitter experience. We must not explain it away by saying that these were only the alternations of Balaam's own mind. They were; but they were the alternations of a mind with which God was expostulating, and to which God appeared differently at different times; the horrible mazes and inconsistencies of a spirit which contradicts itself, and strives to disobey the God whom yet it feels and acknowledges. To such a state of mind God becomes a contradiction. "With the forward" — oh, how true! - "Thou wilt show Thyself froward."

3. We notice next the evidences in him of a disordered mind and heart. It is a strange, sad picture. The first man in the land, gifted beyond most others, conscious of great mental power, going on to splendid prospects, yet with hopelessness and misery working at his heart. Who would have envied Balaam if he could have seen all the hell that was working at his heart?

4. Lastly, let us consider the impossibility under such circumstances of going back. Balaam offers to go back. The angel says, "Go on." There was yet one hope for him, to be true, to utter God's wolds careless of the consequences; but he who had been false so long, how should he be true? It was too late. In the ardour of youth you have made perhaps a wrong choice, or chosen an unfit profession, or suffered yourself weakly and passively to be drifted into a false course of action, and now, in spite of yourself, you feel there is no going back. To many minds, such a lot comes as with the mysterious force of a destiny. They see themselves driven, and forget that they put themselves in the way of the stream that drives them. They excuse their own acts as if they were coerced. They struggle now and then faintly, as Balaam did — try to go back — cannot — and at last sink passively in the mighty current that floats them on to wrong. And thenceforth to them all God's intimations will come unnaturally. His voice will sound as that of an angel against them in the way. Spectral lights will gleam, only to show a quagmire from which there is no path of extrication.

(F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

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KJV: And Balak sent yet again princes, more, and more honourable than they.

WEB: Balak sent yet again princes, more, and more honorable than they.