There are two major things I learned from the book of Numbers.
1) The Bible is filled with a great deal of historical fact.
2) The Bible is filled with a great deal of metaphor.
Many seem to believe it can only be one way or the other, but I fully believe it is both ways. Actually I will just defer to my previous post on The God Squad to put it more eloquently than I.
Anyway, I think Numbers is a fabulous illustration of exactly what I mean.
First we have pages and pages of what is essentially census data. (Also, important to note that the census was in fact not a Communist plot invented by the Obama administration. But I digress).
While generally this part of the Bible makes me want to pass out from boredom, when I read it this time, it really clicked with me. People used the Bible to record HISTORICAL FACTS. This kind of blew my mind because there was definitely a time in my life I believed the whole book was fairy tale nonsense. But if the first part of Numbers is a fairy tale, it’s the most boring fairy tale ever recorded.
But then we shoot forward to Numbers 22, which The God Squad also referenced in that link above. The story of Balaam and his donkey:
26 Then the angel of the LORD moved on ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or to the left. 27 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat her with his staff. 28 Then the LORD opened the donkey’s mouth, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?”
29 Balaam answered the donkey, “You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now.”
30 The donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?” “No,” he said.
31 Then the LORD opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown.
Now I believe in an all powerful God. I believe if God can create the entire universe, He can make a donkey talk … if He wanted to.
However, if a donkey were to start speaking, any sane person would react by gasping or running away or screaming “Ahhhhh my donkey is talking!” Instead Balaam gets in the donkey’s face with a snappy retort as if the donkey speaks to him every day.
And THIS is why I believe the Bible speaks in metaphors.
Either way, I like what the God Squad says. There’s a difference between something being true, and something actually happening. The message is true — does it really matter whether it actually happened or not?
Painting Faith 
This is really interesting.
I have no comment on the census part of Numbers. I’ve never read it because I found it too boring.
But I don’t know that I completely agree with the idea that Balaam’s donkey didn’t speak. It is, of course, entirely possible, and the form of their conversation does seem reminiscent of various fairy tales/morality stories. Still, it doesn’t seem entirely incongruous within the context of the story. The story gives a reason for the donkey to speak, and a means, the Lord’s power. I don’t think it odd for Balaam to speak to his donkey without shock. He’s a *very* strange dude, and he’s mad as what, so it may not even register with him. Anybody who’s in the business of blessing and cursing for money has probably seen some strange things, strange supernatural things. In that context, it may not strike him as odd at all.
Though I must say, after having read through the text, that is a very odd section. It’s in between two verses that both say, “Go with the men, but speak only what I tell you.”, which, as near as I can tell, was what Balaam was doing when the angel of the Lord appeared to his donkey. And the section is justified only by the words, “God was very angry when he went”, which doesn’t entirely make sense since God had told him to go ahead and go. So, it would be very easy to understand the text as being slipped in for some reason beyond historical recounting.
Maybe I just want it to be true because I like the idea of animals talking. It *is* a very appealing story in so many ways.
Maybe it is best understood as a Strange Story of Dubious Veracity.