The Counsel of Balaam and the Doctrine of Balaam
Old Testament: Numbers 31:16
Are not these they, that deceived the children of Israel by the counsel of Balaam, and made you transgress against the Lord by the sin of Phogor, for which also the people was punished?
Old Testament, also: Numbers 25:1-3
And Israel at that time abode in Settim, and the people committed fornication with the daughters of Moab, Who called them to their sacrifices. And they ate of them, and adored their gods. And Israel was initiated to Beelphegor: upon which the Lord being angry,
New Testament: Apocalypse 2:14
But I have against thee a few things: because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat, and to commit fornication:
The connection
Balaam is not a false prophet. God speaks to him, and the four oracles he delivers are true, one of them the star out of Jacob. Balaam even says the right thing out loud, that if Balac gave him his house full of silver and gold he could not alter the word of the Lord. What he cannot do is want anything else. Forbidden to curse Israel, he keeps the customer and changes the method, and the counsel he sells is that Israel need not be cursed at all if Israel can be made to earn a curse on its own. Numbers reports the outcome before it names the author: the people at Settim, the daughters of Moab, the sacrifices eaten, Beelphegor. Only in chapter thirty one does Moses attach a name to the strategy. The Apocalypse then makes the man's name a permanent label for the tactic itself, the doctrine of Balaam, addressed not to pagans but to a church, because the danger it describes is not persecution from outside but a stumblingblock set inside by someone who knows exactly where to put it. What the sword could not accomplish and the curse was not permitted to accomplish, an invitation to dinner did.
Moral sense
A gift can be genuine, the words true, the theology correct, and the man still lost, because none of that is the same as wanting what God wants. Balaam never says a false word in the whole account and is condemned throughout the New Testament anyway.
Anagogical sense
The last judgment on Balaam is passed by Christ to a living church, which means the tactic outlived the man and the warning is not merely a thing of the past.
Warrant
Apocalypse 2:14 names both Balaam and Balac and summarises the counsel of Numbers 31:16 and 25:1-3 in its own words, so the identification is made by the New Testament itself. Two further New Testament passages treat the same figure as a settled type of corruption, 2 Peter 2:15 on the way of Balaam of Bosor, who loved the wages of iniquity, and Jude 1:11 on the error of Balaam. Checked in the Greek: porneuo is the shared verb, in its compound ekporneuo at Numbers 25:1 in the Septuagint rather than at Numbers 31:16, which supplies the counsel of Balaam itself, and again at Apocalypse 2:14, with huios and Israel shared alongside it. The name is shared, which is what makes this an accusation rather than an allusion: Balaam stands at Numbers 31:16 in the Septuagint and at Apocalypse 2:14, where the doctrine is called his by name. On the Catechism reference, which was audited and changed: CCC 2121 is about simony, the buying and selling of spiritual things, and belongs to Simon the magician rather than to Balaam. 2284 is the paragraph this entry needs: scandal, the behaviour that leads another into evil and makes the giver his neighbour's tempter. Apocalypse 2:14 says Balaam taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock, skandalon, before the children of Israel.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2284.
The verses
Numbers 31:16 · Numbers 25:1 · Numbers 25:2 · Numbers 25:3 · Apocalypse 2:14
