The Midrash (rabbinic teaching) says that when Abraham went to do the Akedah (Binding of Isaac), he saddled his donkey. He saddled his donkey. Saddling the donkey was like putting gas in your car today. So nowadays, today, you plug in your car. So those days they didn’t have that, that donkey. So you put a saddle on the donkey. Who else saddled their donkey? Chazak u'baruch, Bil'am. There was an anti-Semite called Bil'am, and he was going to curse the Jewish people. He was all excited about it. It says he saddled his donkey, too.
And the Gemara comes along and says, “Look, God tells us, God tells Bil'am: ‘You think you’re the first one to saddle your donkey? Abraham already beat you to it. He saddled his donkey when he did the Akedah Yitzchak. So you’re not the first saddler.’” I don’t mean in this Midrash. What is the Midrash saying here? Bil'am has to get to the mountain to curse the Jewish people, so he needs transportation. So he saddles his donkey. How else is he going to get there? So it’s as if he did some type of sin. God tells Bil'am, “What do you think? You’re the first one to saddle your donkey? The nation that you’re trying to curse, their father already saddled the donkey before you. So therefore, you have no chance.”
If I were Bil'am, I would say, “Good luck to Abraham. He saddled his donkey because he needed to go to the Akedah. I’m saddling my donkeys because I need to go curse the Jewish people.” Guess what? Two people could saddle their donkeys, and the explanation is as follows. It’s odd for Bil'am to saddle his donkey because that’s a menial job. That’s like the president or some great scholar fixing a flat tire. You call the guy to do it. It’s beneath Bil'am to saddle his donkey. And you know why he saddled his donkey? Because he was blind. What do you mean, blind? He was blinded with hatred, and the Gemara says that when you’re blind with hatred, you do funny things. He was just so excited to get there that he saddled his own donkey. The Gemara is giving us an example of how hatred blinds a person so much that you’ll do things even against the normal protocol. It’s almost like he just wanted to get there so fast. He’ll saddle his own donkey, and the people were telling Bil'am, “What are you doing, Bil'am? It’s not your dignity.” He said, “I have cursed the Jewish people. I don’t care about the protocol.” It shows you how much the hatred blinded him.
So what God was telling Bil'am was: “You think you were the first to be blinded and therefore act out of protocol? Someone was blinded before you.” And that was Abraham. You think it’s dignified for Abraham to saddle his own donkey? He had 318 slaves. Why did Abraham do it himself? Because he was also blinded. By what? You ever hear the saying, “Love is blind”? Abraham was blinded by the love of Hashem. What do you mean, he was blinded by the love of Hashem? Hashem told him, “Go do it.” No, Hashem didn’t tell him to do it. Hashem just told him, “You know, if you love me, you do it. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.” And therefore, Abraham’s love was so great that he saddled his own donkey even though he wasn’t commanded to. And therefore, God is telling Abraham, “Your blindness was preceded by somebody else’s blindness.” The love that Abraham had overrides and overshadows and overpowers the hate. It’s the tale of two people saddling a donkey: one because he hates the Jews, and the other because he loves God.
But now we understand that that love wasn’t love to fulfill a commandment. Love is not shown when you fulfill a commandment. Love is shown when you do something more than you have to do. If you give your wife a birthday gift, that does not show love. That shows fear, because you have to do that. That just shows you’re afraid. I’m 100%. I’m honest. It doesn’t show anything. But if you give your wife a gift just like that—it’s not Mother’s Day, it’s not the anniversary, it’s not…—what is this gift for? That’s love. Love is shown when it’s above the obligation. And therefore, Abraham was blinded with love over something he didn’t have to do. And that’s what makes Abraham unique. Everybody else benefits from the greatness of that man, Avraham Avinu, the volunteer. That’s what makes the 10th test the most exceptional of them all.