2 Peter 2:15

τῇ ὁδῷ τοῦ Βαλαὰμ. The comparison of the conduct of the False Teachers to that of Balaam is significant as determining their character and motive (see Introduction, pp. 115 ff.). The writer of 2 Peter takes the miraculous narrative in Numbers 22:21-35 literally. It is no disparagement of the value of the illustration that we, in our day, can no longer do so. Balaam had the gift of real spiritual vision. He is described in Numbers 24:16 as one “whose eye was closed,” i.e. to outer things, and also as one “which seeth the vision of the Almighty, falling down and having his eyes open,” i.e. to spiritual vision. Balaam was one who allowed the greed of gain to become stronger than the prophetic impulse. He is conscious that he is tempting God, and an evil conscience makes him irritable. He fears lest God may yet interfere to rob him of his reward. When the ass starts aside he beats it, but ultimately his passion is subdued by the momentary triumph of his higher spiritual instincts, when he begins to suspect that in the stubbornness of the animal there is really the power of God exercised to hinder him in his course. The angel with the drawn sword is often the form that men's religion takes who are disobeying the voice of conscience. “There is a strange depth of meaning in the appealing eye of an ill-treated animal. It is an appeal, in the first place, to whatever remnant of pity and generosity may still survive in the heart of the man who ill-treats it, but it is an appeal, in the second place, to the justice of the God who made them both, a cry of which we may be sure it has entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. When animals are put to unnecessary suffering, either in the shambles or as beasts of burden, or in the interests of science or sport, or for any other reason, cases are sure to arise in which we may justly apply the words of our Epistle, and say of such poor tortured creatures that with their dying gaze, no less clearly than if they had spoken with man's voice, they forbade the madness of their torturers” (Mayor, p. 203). Cf. F. W. Robertson, Sermons, Ser. iv. pp. 40 f.