In Numbers, chapter twenty-two, verse twenty-eight, the Lord opens the mouth of the donkey. Earlier, Balaam saddled his mule to travel with the princes of Moab, and God was angry because he went. The angel of the Lord stood in Balaam’s way to disrupt his intentions. During the travel of Balaam along with the two princes, the donkey saw an image of an Angel. The donkey became aggravated and would not continue en route to where they were going.
Several times Balaam attempted to steer his donkey in the direction he desired to go with the others, but the mule would not cooperate. After experiencing the animal turning aside to the field, Balaam gets his foot crushed in a nearby wall, and the donkey routing to a restricted area where he neither turns left nor right, eventually falling to the ground. His anger gets the best of him. Balaam starts to hit the mule several times during the situation. The Lord opens the mouth of the donkey and begins to speak to Balaam.
The New Testament states that the donkey spoke: “with a man’s voice” in Second Peter, chapter two, verse sixteen. The episode was a very extraordinary and miraculous affair and the effect of supernatural power. A donkey that God had made, which had no organs endued with speech, should speak so plainly and distinctly, and yet it should not be thought incredible, for what is it that Omnipotence cannot do? The debate among scholars is whether this was all done in a visionary way and not performed.
Today, no one can humanly comprehend how God made the donkey speak to a man at the time. God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. Balaam, who serves many gods, could not heed the signs from the living God that He was trying to help him. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts, nor His ways our ways. One living God would make it clear to us. However, if we have many gods, which includes idols and things, it will make it unclear to us when the living God attempts to connect.