"What Star is This"

Hymn of the Week

In the church of my boyhood — I am not kidding — one of the paintings of Old Testament figures was of Balaam, that prophet for hire, who had to be warned by his donkey to stop in his tracks, because an angel with a sword was ahead of them, and the angel was not pleased. Balak, king of the Moabites, wanted to squeeze out of Balaam a curse on the Hebrews …