In the Bible, a non-Israelite prophet hired to curse the Israelites but who blessed them instead; also used historically to mean a donkey.
From Hebrew Bil'am, a figure in the Book of Numbers. The word entered English through Biblical translation and became a proper name reference. The donkey association comes from the famous Biblical episode where Balaam's donkey speaks.
Balaam's talking donkey is one of the Bible's weirdest miracles—an animal miraculously gains speech to rebuke its master, making it perhaps the only biblical story where a donkey has more moral clarity than a human.
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