'Balaam' Is a Good Guy or a Bad Guy

Balaam, a prophet for hire, refuses to do god's bidding because his donkey is talking him out of it. The bible tells me so about divine violence that I don't think the god of the cosmos tells men to keep themselves from killing virgin girls or young women. And this has caused no little amount of consternation among Bible readers. But let me collapse here as a way of explaining it away, just dealing with the realities of the bible. So second chapter 31 contains a truly difficult, really horrific scene concerning violence against the midianites.