Musar על במדבר 16:6

There cannot be a question of G–d intentionally misleading anyone. What is frequently the case is that someone deceives himself. Hosea 14,10, writes: כי ישרים דרכי השם, וצדיקים ילכו בם, ופושעים יכשלו בם, "For the ways of the Lord are upright, and the just walk on them, whereas the sinners will stumble on them." The prophet is quite explicit in placing the blame on the sinners, not on G–d or His ways. Here too G–d intended to enter into dialogue with Bileam when He asked him about "these men." Bileam the wicked, jumped to the conclusion that G–d did not know everything, else He would not have asked, and used this to try and deceive G–d. Rashi's comment here that G–d wanted to deceive Bileam seems to contradict his comment on Genesis 3,9, when G–d asks Adam: "Where are you?," and Rashi says that G–d knew full well where Adam was, but wanted to enter into dialogue with him without frightening him by punishing him without preamble. One must understand therefore, that when Rashi wrote on our verse: "in order to mislead him," the subject of "him" is not G–d but the invitation of these men to curse Israel. The invitation of Balak was the מכשול, the stumbling block which caused Bileam's sins to deceive him into thinking he could deceive G–d. He did not understand the truth of G–d's intentions when He asked him rhetorically: "who are these men?" This whole incident is similar to one recorded in the Talmud Yuma 87a, when the great scholar Rav went to the house of a butcher on the eve of the Day of Atonement in order to give that butcher a chance to apologise for something that had occurred between them. This was unusual, since the butcher should have come to Rav to beg his forgiveness for the wrong he had committed. On the way he met Rabbi Hunna his disciple who asked Rav where the latter was going. When told that he was on his way to reconciliation with a certain butcher, Rabbi Hunna said "Rav went to kill a person," for he could not imagine that a butcher who had insulted Rav should not be punished. When Rav arrived at that butcher's he found him busy cutting off the head of an animal. The butcher raised his eyes and exclaimed in wonderment "you are Abba! Go away! I do not want to have anything to do with you!" At that moment a bone from that animal hit the butcher in his neck causing his death. Therefore, if the butcher died, it was his obstinacy in refusing to accept Rav's offer at reconciliation that made him a candidate for death, since in such circumstances the Day of Atonement would not protect him from the judgment due him. Rabbi Hunna's having said that his teacher was on his way to kill someone certainly was not the cause of this butcher's death. The same explanation applies to Rashi's comment in Parshat Korach, 16,6 that the incense contained a lethal poison. Mistaking the function of incense would lead to the death of the person who willfully abused that instrument of service to G–d. G–d's intent in asking Bileam was fair.