More on Donkeys

From recent graduate Aviva Novick:

About Rabbi Besser's question about "chamor"s, based on his idea that the word "chamor" is related to the word chomer, materialism, and that donkeys represent materialism. I feel like a lot of bnei yisrael's complaints in the midbar are focused around physical things - they want more to eat than just the man, the want water, even that they are afraid to be defeated in battle and killed by the nations living in Israel. This is kind of a stretch, but even korach's complaint is materialistic in a way. By desiring power, he is allowing his material, animalistic drives to determine his actions instead of a more spiritual, God-focused way of thinking. Repeatedly, God tries to re-direct Bnei Yisrael's attention away from the material. they must look upward toward Hashem at the nachash hanichoshet to be healed, they are doomed to wander 40 years in the desert - a place with no material comforts, they use kitoret - a service that involves no animals or blood, only smell, one of the more spiritual senses, to fight a plague, and Korach gets swallowed into the earth itself, punishing his this-world-based desires. even when Hashem sends bnei yisrael meat, he sends birds which fly in the sky, and not a herd of cattle on the ground, making the Jews look toward Hashem. This all works well with Rashi's view of mei miriva. Moshe and Aharon used a physical action to bring forth water as opposed to the preferred non-physical act of talking. So, maybe donkeys are mentioned so often to emphasize that the overall problem the Jews had in the midbar was that they focused on the physical and material, and that they didn't have enough trust in Hashem. This is why they needed the man and tests like it - to help them learn to be dependent on Hashem, not the material world.
I'm not sure that this idea can be applied to any of the specific cases where donkeys are mentioned - it doesn't answer why Moshe used not taking donkeys as an example of how he had not done anything wrong to Datan and Aviram. Maybe donkeys are included in pidyon bichor laws to show Bnei Yisrael that Hashem is truly in charge of everything, not the material world and nature. even the first-born of donkeys really are Hashem's and so they must be redeemed. and perhaps Hashem uses a donkey to communicate with Bilam to rebuke/humble him - even a donkey, the epitome of materialism, could see the malach and Bilam couldn't. it might be a message to Bilam that he isn't as spiritual and all-powerful as he thinks.
This answer isn't so satisfying to me, but it's just a thought.

I should add that after posting that last week from memory, I realized that in the Bilaam story the donkey is called an Aton, not a chamor, so we may not even have a pattern at all. Thanks Aviva, & I hope others are reading & responding.