The Narrow Place and the Narrow Gate: Balaam Stopped on the Broad Way
Old Testament: Numbers 22:26, 32
And nevertheless the angel going on to a narrow place, where there was no way to turn aside either to the right hand or to the left, stood to meet him. ... And the angel said to him: Why beatest thou thy ass these three times? I am come to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse, and contrary to me:
Old Testament, also: Proverbs 23:27; Isaias 49:19-20
For a harlot is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow pit. ... For thy deserts, and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction shall now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be chased far away. The children of thy barrenness shall still say in thy ears: The place is too strait for me, make me room to dwell in.
New Testament: Matthew 7:13-14; Luke 13:24; 2 Peter 2:15-16
Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! ... Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able. ... Leaving the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam of Bosor, who loved the wages of iniquity, But had a check of his madness, the dumb beast used to the yoke, which speaking with man's voice, forbade the folly of the prophet.
The connection
Balaam set out for gain. Balac had promised him honour and whatever he asked (Numbers 22:17), and he saddled his ass and rode to curse the people God had blessed. An angel with a drawn sword stood in the way. The ass saw him three times; the prophet did not. The third time the angel went "on to a narrow place, where there was no way to turn aside either to the right hand or to the left" (Numbers 22:26), and then named the trouble: "thy way is perverse, and contrary to me" (22:32). St Peter reads this very scene. False teachers, "leaving the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam of Bosor, who loved the wages of iniquity ... the dumb beast used to the yoke, which speaking with man's voice, forbade the folly of the prophet" (2 Peter 2:15-16), and St Jude says such men "after the error of Balaam ... have for reward poured out themselves" (Jude 1:11). The way of Balaam is the way of self, a gift of God spent for wages. Christ sets the two roads side by side: "wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction ... How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life" (Matthew 7:13-14). So Balaam is the hinge: the man on the broad way who is met, for mercy's sake, by a narrow place, and the narrow place is all that stands between him and the sword: "unless the ass had turned out of the way ... I had slain thee" (Numbers 22:33). The other narrow places of the Old Testament show what the gate is not. The harlot is "a narrow pit" (Proverbs 23:27), a narrowness that traps, and restored Sion finds her land "too strait" (Isaias 49:20) only because she has grown. Christ's gate is narrow like Balaam's pass, guarded and with no turning aside; it is not a pit, and it opens onto room.
Moral sense
The constraint that leaves no room to turn aside is not the obstacle to the road; it is the road. St Gregory the Great reads the stopped journey as the check of affliction: the ass "sees an angel which the human mind sees not", because the flesh held back by suffering shows the proud mind the God it would not see. Balaam only saw the angel once he had nowhere left to go, and the beast that saved his life was beaten three times for it. But the check did not change him. Balaam was let go on, bound to speak only God's word, and he blessed Israel; yet, as Gregory says, "going to curse, he changed his voice, but not his mind", and in the end he found another road to Balac's reward (Numbers 31:16). The narrow place is a mercy only to the one who turns back in it.
Anagogical sense
The narrowness is for the road, not for the end of it. Job is promised that God "shall set thee at large out of the narrow mouth ... and the rest of thy table shall be full of fatness" (Job 36:16). The pass where Balaam could not turn aside, and the gate few find, both open onto the wide place; the broad way, for all its room, ends in destruction.
The Fathers
St Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule III.12: "The ass, stopped by the prohibition, sees an angel which the human mind sees not; because for the most part the flesh, slow through afflictions, indicates to the mind from the scourge which it endures the God whom the mind itself which has the flesh under it did not see." And: "But Balaam did not obtain the benefit of this rebuke for this reason, that, going to curse, he changed his voice, but not his mind."
Warrant
Interpretive. Matthew 7:13-14 and Luke 13:24 do not cite Numbers 22, Proverbs 23:27 or Isaias 49. One side of the hinge is Scripture's own: 2 Peter 2:15-16 and Jude 1:11 read the scene itself as the way of Balaam, the road taken for wages, and hodos, way, stands at Numbers 22:32 in the Septuagint, at 2 Peter 2:15 and at Matthew 7:13-14. But neither St Peter nor St Jude joins Balaam's narrow place to Christ's narrow gate; that joining is the entry's own. The link is also lexical: the Greek stenos used by Christ renders the Hebrew tsar ("narrow, tight," from a root meaning to bind) in the Septuagint at Numbers 22:26, Proverbs 23:27, 4 Kings 6:1 and Isaias 49:20, so the same word stands behind the angel's narrow place, the harlot's narrow pit, and the gate that leads to life. Numbers 22:24 uses a different word, mishol, a hapax legomenon meaning a road shut in between walls. St Gregory the Great reads the scene morally, of affliction checking a proud mind (Pastoral Rule III.12), and does not bring in the gate. Balaam's later counsel at Numbers 31:16 belongs to the entry on the doctrine of Balaam and is only named here.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1696.
The verses
Numbers 22:26 · Numbers 22:32 · Proverbs 23:27 · Isaias 49:19 · Isaias 49:20 · Matthew 7:13 · Matthew 7:14 · Luke 13:24 · 2 Peter 2:15 · 2 Peter 2:16
