Hummingbird hassles eagle.

 Oakland in the 1990s, I am sweating out my dissertation on a computer that unravels each day's work.  Some secret worm has burrowed in my hard drive. It's like writing on quicksand. I type for eight hours, and the next day either nothing is saved, or some, or sometimes it sticks. But how do I know? Like Penelope secretly unraveling her day's weaving each night.  Does this misery ever end?  

I walk down to the Oakland Catholic cemetery, a mile from our house.  Victoria and I go regularly.  It's as a blistery blue California day. Grave stones stand gray against the bright grass and spiky pine,  the divine wanders among the dead, humans leave you to yourself.  I'm Hiccuping with tears. It's nearly seven years. Am I going to get through this? Give me a sign.  

And YHWH, in a good mood offers a "Gideon moment": Test me.  Now, I like the Gideon story in Judges 6.  Gideon is no respecter of persons. The angel interrupts his secret threshing to recruit him for a manly job; take down the Midianites. Gideon basically says,  "Pardon me, but we didn't make this problem."  But he relents, and after a series of tests for Gideon, God gives Gideon the chance to test God. So Gideon asks for  wet wool on dry ground (done) and wet ground and dry wool (easy).  What's it to God? Not like parting the Red Sea.  Gideon has to complete his impossible task, which YHWH says is a breeze, like a little league playing the Kansas City Royals (world series tonight).  Gideon wins. 

But I'm not thinking of all that when I say, "If things will be OK,  I want to see an eagle and a hummingbird together."  After that big declaration, I look around sheepishly and think: this is the fairytale of three wishes. You always fuck up.  Which, in a nicer way, is what my mother says when she hears this story later: Don't test God. And she shoots me a strong look that I interpret as, How did I raise this one?

The good news is that my Gideon moment stops my tearful petition.  It's now dusk and as the light turns rosen,  a conference of birds rise up in the tangled bushes that border the cemetery.  They twitter in gorgeous chaotic harmony. It's enough, I think, this bird anthem;  it's  answer enough. And up from the memory, I hear, first one  line, then another, a song I composed in my evangelical Minnesota days.

A Malcolm Solbakken hymn Kari would love. I sing it to myself, surprised, but glad to remember it.
"Woke up drowsy this morning.
The sun was playing on my sheets,
she was elated with her light.
I breathed a psalm to the morning.
And as I closed the book,
the birds outside my window harmonized.

We've got a long way to climb
We can't avoid the winter storms
and intimately comes the night
but deeper still the greeining
the earth gives birth before our eyes.

Woke up bright from my dreaming.
Somebody called me to my feet
and I was standing in the light.
A stranger stood before me and
as he smiled I noticed something familiar in his eyes.

He said, sister, do you see me,
he said Kathryn, do you know me
he asked Kerry, do you love me?
and I cried: Lord!

He said, we've got a long way to climb
but I will walk with you
Together we will make the narrow wide
and as I love you love each other
I've conquered death so enter life..

--------------------
I sing it as I walk home for supper with Victoria, and to bed.

And the next morning,  I remember the last stanza of the song as I wake
Around the world people are waking
some on their mats, some on the streets
and some are waking in their cells
Lord I pray this dawn now breaking
will break into the hearts and minds of those
who keep this darkness

We've got a long way to climb...

Then I looked out our window.  A wild band of hummingbirds are whizzing through the garden, never have we seen this. They circle up and down, in a crazy abandon.  All morning, they buzz the air.  I watch them, breathless. When I sit down to write one flies up and peers through the window.  I get it,  I see it! 

Years later, at the Wisconsin lake, the bald eagle sits in the high branch of a white pine facing our island,  I kayak out to get closer and disturb a hummingbird nest set in the dark of the lower trunk.  They buzz out to shoo me away. 

For years, I called this a miracle.  Now, I wonder about the Gideon-God pact. What was my part of the bargain?  Jesse says: beware that you honor what you've been given, and not become the fox. 

Been interested in Balaam, mostly because of the donkey and angel. See below for a post of my sermon on this.

But as I prepared, I learned more about Balaam.

Who is Balaam? A mesopotamian soothsayer who “sees” into the future, usually through dreams. But is he a sorcerer or a diviner? Sorcery, or  keshafim, was banned and punished by death is Israel (Deut 18:10). In Mesopotamian laws it is also a capital crime. Divination, nahash, involved reading omens, casting lots, interpreting oil or water - was practiced by the Levite priests who threw the urim and thurim. Balaam is considered nahash (23:23, 24:1) and kesem (22:7, 23:23). This form of divination could be tolerated in Israel since it wasn’t incompatible with monotheism.  
Hackett indicates that "Balaam is a diviner, a form of intermediary apparently acceptable in court circles in preexilic Judah, as elsewhere in the ANE [Ancient Near East]; [. . .] In those verses generally called E, however, we see in Balaam a typical Yahweh-prophet, one who can only speak the word that Yahweh puts in his mouth, a phrase reflecting the paradigmatic description of a prophet in Deut 18:18.” ( Hackett, 1992, p 569). 

A  wonderful discovery at Tell Deir ˁAllā, on the Ammonite site of the Jabbok River in the late 1960s produced plaster inscriptions now called Book of Balaam.  This Aramaic/ Canaanite the text dated 800 BCE refers to Balaam's visions (or Bileam). He is a “seer of the gods” (ḥzh ˀlhn).   Here is an excerpt.

The gods came to him at night.
And he beheld a vision in accordance with El's utterance.
They said to Balaam, son of Beor:
"So will it be done, with naught surviving.
No one has seen [the likes of] what you have heard!"
Balaam Reports his Vision to His Intimates.
Balaam arose on the morrow;
He summoned the heads of the assembly to him,
And for two days he fasted, and wept bitterly.
Then his intimates entered into his presence,
and they said to Balaam, son of Beor,
"Why do you fast, and why do you weep?"
Then he said to them: "Be seated, and I will relate to you what the Shaddai gods have planned,
And go, see the acts of the god!"
Balaam Describes the Celestial Vision and Its Aftermath in the Land
"The gods have banded together;
The Shaddai gods have established a council,
And they have said to [the goddess] Shagar:
'Sew up, close up the heavens with dense cloud,
That darkness exist there, not brilliance;
Obscurity and not clarity;
So that you instill dread in dense darkness.
And - never utter a sound again!'
It shall be that the swift and crane will shriek insult to the eagle,
And a nest of vultures shall cry out in response.
The stork, the young of the falcon and the owl,
The chicks of the heron, sparrow and cluster of eagles;
Pigeons and birds, [and fowl in the s]ky.
And a rod [shall flay the cat]tle;
Where there are ewes, a staff shall be brought.
Hares - eat together!
Free[ly feed], oh beasts [of the field]!
And [freely] drink, asses and hyenas!"

Balaam arrives at a critical point in Numbers. The book itself has been organized into five parts. Let's just use Unger's  three geographical divisions coupled to two units of journeys:
(1) Israel in the Desert of Sinai (1:1 – 10:10)
(2) From Sinai to Kadesh (10:11 – 12:16)
(3) In the Kadesh area (13:1 – 20:21)
(4) Detour to avoid Edom (20:22 – 21:35)
(5) Israel in the plains of Moab (22:1 – 36:13). 
  
Turning to the Oracles of Balaam in Numbers 22-24, we have Balak King of Moab worried about the ways this immigrant force the Israelies have plowed through neighboring territories.  Following protocol, he hires Balaam the seer to curse them.  Balaam tells him he will consult El about this, so he dreams and El or YHWH tells him he can't curse the Israelites because they are blessed.  Balaam says he can only do what El prescribes, so he can't curse the Israelites.  Balak, increasingly agitated, thinks Balaam is bargaining for a higher divination fee. So he sends messengers a second time with more gifts. Balaam goes back to dreaming. He receives the same answer (no), but then El permits him to meet Balak if he repeats what El tells him to say.  It is structured like this:

Numbers 23: 7-10 – Balaam sees YHWH won't curse the Israelites
Second oracle (23:18-24) Balaam learns YHWH is resolved to bless Israel.
Third oracle (23: 3-9) blessing comes to a climax – God originates curse or blessing, and God’s word cannot be revoked (23:20).
Balaam renounces divination
Fourth oracle (24:15-19) Balaam infused with divine spirit, prophesies that Moab will be dominated by Israel.

The little story I love best - his trip on the donkey and encounter with the angel - is set inside the Balaam oracles that occur from Chpts 22-24, usually called the Book of Balaam.   Like the jewel in the egg,  we have the story  I will tell next.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hackett, J.A., Balaam, Anchor Bible Dictionary,  New York: Doubleday, 1992, 569-572.
Levine,  B.A. "The Deir 'Alla Plaster Inscriptions", in: W.W. Hallo (ed.), Context of Scripture, vol.2 (2003), 140-145.
Oppenheim, A. L. The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East, Philadelphia, 1956
 Unger, M.F. Unger’s Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed.; Chicago: Moody Press, 1966,  799.
See this collection of dreams in the bible