Balaam (Prophet living at the time of Egypt and Wilderness)

The prophet hired to curse Israel who blesses them instead, famous for the talking donkey (Numbers 22-24). Josephus gives him his own chapter title and treats him as a real, complicated figure, genuinely gifted, genuinely compromised, rather than a folk-tale villain.

Balaam was a non-Israelite prophet hired by the Moabite king Balak to curse the invading Israelites, and God famously made Balaam's own donkey speak to rebuke him after the animal saw an angel blocking their path that Balaam himself couldn't see. Every time Balaam opened his mouth to curse Israel as instructed, blessing came out instead, and his oracles include a famous prophecy of a star that would rise out of Jacob. Later biblical writers remember Balaam as a corrupting influence who advised Balak on how to seduce Israel into idolatry through Moabite women, and he is killed in the resulting conflict.