[Avodah] animals and bechira??

[harchinam]

>
> do animals have bechira??
> eg bilaam's donkey (apparently they
> can see angels (at least in this case)
> and have thoughts
>

Why would it seem that Bilaam's donkey had bechira? If an animal sees
someone in his path, he will try to avoid him, especially if whoever he saw
had a sword and was standing in his path. Animals act out of instinct
without much conscious thought.

The miraculous thing in this case would seem to be that the donkey seems to
have had ruach hakodesh to see what Bilaam could not, but how do we know
that all animals don't see angels? According to Rashi, this is the case.
Rashi holds that animals are allowed to see spiritual beings that humans
cannot because people would live in constant fear if they could
actually perceive everything around them.

Ramban holds on the other hand that since angels are not physical beings
they can only been seen when they take on human form, as in the angels that
visited Avraham. Ramban holds that the donkey did not really *see* the
angel, but rather sensed that it was in danger; that there was figuratively
a being with a sword drawn standing in front of its path.

The donkey did speak to Bilaam but this was also a miracle so there is no
reason to assume anything other than that Hashem just put words into the
mouth of an animal who "seemed" to speak but really did not have the
ability to form thoughts. Ramban holds that the purpose of the donkey
speaking was that Hashem was showing Bilaam that the power of speech comes
only through Him and if a beast could speak intelligently then surely
Bilaam could only say what Hashem allowed him to say.

*** Rena
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