Torah Posting: בלק
Now comes one of the best stories in the entire Torah. I look forward to it the whole way through. It’s got great new characters, slapstick comedy, talking animals, potent magic, and Jewish culture. In fact, I’d say we’re just about at the point in the story where new sedimentary layers of culture are forming. We’re through the primordial Mesopotamian mythology and the Egyptian religious minority interjections and getting into the part where recognizably Israelite peoples are telling their own stories. We may never have conclusive scholarship on this, but let’s just call it The Vibe.
We left off with the children of Yisra’el encamped just across the river from the land God has promised them, having just struck their first major military victories in the area. Word is spreading. A certain Balak, son of Tzipor, king of the nation of Mo’av, is alarmed by their power, and he sends word to one Bil’am, son of Be’or, who lives in P’tor, a place near the Euphrates river, which the text identifies as Balak’s place of descent. This geography should connote earlier, more primordial cultures like the ones back in the beginning.
“There is a people that came out from Mitzrayim,” Balak transmits via messenger. “It hides the Earth from view” — that’s how numerous its people are — “and it has settled right next to me. Please come and put a curse upon this people. It’s my only chance to defeat them, for I know that whomever you bless is blessed, and whomever you curse is cursed.” It seems this Bil’am is some sort of powerful wizard.
Balak’s messengers to Bil’am are the elders of Mo’av, as well as those from Midyan, the people who taught Mosheh his indigenous wisdom (and whose high priest is Mosheh’s father-in-law). It is said that these elders all wield the power of divination (קסם), a term here intended to be pejorative: forbidden foreign practices, false prophecy. This mission to summon Bil’am is a gathering of the forces of non-Israelite magic.
When they arrive, Bil’am tells them to spend the night there, as he will tell them in the morning what יהוה instructs him to do. Yes, this powerful wizard is in personal relationship with the same God who has brought this troublesome people into the region.
God comes to Bil’am and asks him, “What do these messengers want of you?” Bil’am repeats Balak’s message verbatim, humbly leaving out the parts that puffed him up for his magical abilities. God, of course, tells Bil’am not to go; he must not curse this people, for this people is blessed.
In the morning, Bil’am matter-of-factly tells the emissaries he will not be doing the cursing, for God does not will it. The messengers return to Balak and tell him Bil’am refused. So since the magical delegation didn’t work, Balak sends fancier people and promises Bil’am massive rewards. Bil’am replies, “Even if Balak were to give me his whole house full of silver and gold, I couldn’t do anything — small or great — to violate the command of my God, יהוה. But you folks stay overnight, and I’ll let you know what else God says.”
This time, God gives Bil’am permission to go with them, but he must still do as God commands and refrain from cursing the people.
Sure enough, Bil’am saddles his donkey in the morning and departs with the dignitaries of Mo’av, and God has the most adorably God reaction: God is pissed off that Bil’am exercised his freedom to go. So an angel manifests to Bil’am to be a שתן (“satan”), a divine adversary.
When Bil’am’s donkey sees the angel of יהוה standing in the road with a sword, she swerves off into the fields, and Bil’am beats her to drive her back onto the road. The donkey sees the angel, and the venerable wizard does not!
Bil’am presses on, and so the messenger of יהוה repositions himself in the middle of another road, this one between vineyards with fences along either side. The donkey freaks out again, and with nowhere to run, she presses up against the wall and pins Bil’am’s leg, so he beats her again. He still doesn’t see the adversary.
Finally, the angel moves again, this time choosing a spot on a road so narrow that there’s no room to swerve right or left. This time, the donkey just gives up and lies down with Bil’am on her back. This enrages him, and he beats her with his stick. In response, God gives the donkey the power of speech, and she says, “What have I done to you that you’ve beaten me three times?”
Bil’am, the powerful wizard, is super dysregulated, and he replies, “You have mocked me! If I had a sword with me, I would kill you!”
The donkey says, “Look, I’ve been your donkey for a long time. Have I made a habit of acting like this?”
Bil’am sobers up and replies, “No.”
Then God uncovers Bil’am’s eyes, and he sees the adversary standing there, sword drawn. Immediately, Bil’am bows low to the ground.
The angel speaks: “Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I [i.e. God] have come out as your adversary because your errand is obnoxious to me. When the donkey saw me — three times — that’s why she shied away. She saved your life, doofus.”
Bil’am, humbled, replies, “That’s my bad. I didn’t know you were there. If you still disapprove, I will turn back.”
But by now, God has a plan. The messenger says, “Go with these people, but you must say nothing except what I tell you.” And so he does.
I don’t really feel like analyzing this story for you. I feel that everything about it speaks for itself. The one thing I will say is, it is a demonstration of all the approaches to Torah I have been pushing for the entire time. If you want to read this like some kind of precise mystical formula for objective truth, I submit you are going to get nothing out of it. This is a culturally embedded myth made for telling around fires. There are laugh lines. The characters are larger than life. And yet, the whole spiritual reality of its origin culture is brilliantly illustrated in it. Trying to explain it to you would be like trying to explain myself.
The point is, Bil’am is now properly oriented to his mission. When Balak hears Bil’am is arriving, he goes out to meet him. He asks Bil’am why he didn’t come the first time he was invited. “Haven’t I promised to make it worth your while?”
Bil’am replies, “Well, now that I’m here and at your service, do I have your permission to speak freely? Because I’m only going to say the words God puts into my mouth, whether or not they’re the words you want to hear.”
Balak can’t really argue with that, and together they go to a place called Kiryat Hutzot, where Balak makes animal offerings and serves them to Bil’am and the dignitaries. The next morning, they go up to the Offering Places of Ba’al (foreign god), where they can see just a portion of the massive people of Yisra’el.
Bil’am gets to work, instructing Balak to construct seven altars and bring forth seven bulls and seven rams ready to offer. Sounds like a heavy-duty Kabbalistic ritual. Together, they offer one bull and one ram on each altar. Then Bil’am tells Balak to wait there while he goes off alone to speak with God and find out what the next steps are.
God appears to Bil’am, and Bil’am says, “I have set up the altars and made the offerings,” which is sort of interesting because wouldn’t God know that? Anyway, God puts a word/thing (דבר, same root) in Bil’am’s mouth to say to Balak, and tantalizingly we don’t find out yet what it is.
When Bil’am returns to Balak and all the dignitaries standing beside their offerings, he rears up and utters a short but epic mystical poem, which you should read in full, but the gist of it is, Bil’am is smitten by the descendants of Ya’akov. “How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I doom whom יהוה has not doomed?” Sufficiently moved by Yisra’el’s magnitude and distinction, Bil’am prays to share their fate!
Balak is like, “Dude, what have you done? You were supposed to curse them, not bless them!”
Bil’am repeats, “I can only repeat what יהוה puts in my mouth.”
Balak is undeterred. He says, “Let’s go to a different spot where you can see more of this people — not all of them, just a different portion — and then you’ll definitely want to curse them.”
So they go to another lookout point and do the same seven bulls, seven rams, seven altars ritual again, and Bil’am goes off to hear from God. When he comes back, he has another poem to recite, this one a bit more stern in tone. It personally admonishes Balak for thinking God is the sort of God who changes God’s mind, reiterates that no harm will come to Yisra’el here, and compares the people to lions and such. One very interesting line says, paraphrasing, that the people of Yisra’el don’t require partial forms of augury and divination such as the ones Balak’s wizard dignitaries practice; they are told directly, once, what God has planned for them.
Balak is even more frazzled now, begging Bil’am to just say nothing rather than open his mouth to curse them and bless them instead, but Bil’am says, “I told you, man, I have to do what God says.”
So Balak takes Bil’am to a third location, this one overlooking the barren wastes. They do the animal sacrifice party again, and Bil’am goes off to talk to God about it one more time.
This time, though, Bil’am understands something about God’s relationship with these Yisra’el people. He doesn’t go soothsaying in the bushes this time, but rather he turns his face to the wilderness, the midbar (מדבר), the Speaking Place, which we know is the way of the Israelite prophets. When he looks up and sees the encampments of the tribes of Yisra’el, the רוח אלהים — the Wind of God that created the very universe — came upon him, and he utters his most beautiful poem yet, the most famous line of which Jewish people recite every day:
מַה־טֹּ֥בוּ אֹהָלֶ֖יךָ יַעֲקֹ֑ב מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶ֖יךָ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
“How fair are your tents, O Jacob,
Your dwellings, O Israel!”
This poem is an extensive blessing upon the people, both for their military prowess and for the abundance of their lands and lives. They are again compared to lions.
Balak is beside himself, of course, and gives Bil’am an annoying lecture and rescinds his rich rewards, saying that God has denied them. Bil’am reminds Balak that he already said no reward could change the fact that he could only say what God allowed him to, and as a parting word, he takes up his theme for one more song. This one is not so nice. It prophesies doom for the nations who resist the coming of Yisra’el, tracing the lineages all the way back to the most ancient names in the Torah, to the times when God first chose which family would go on this whole journey.
After this pronouncement, Bil’am and Balak go their separate ways.
But hang on now. This is the Torah. Don’t expect any happy endings. Are things down on the ground at the Israelite encampment going as swimmingly as it looked to Bil’am from way up above? Not a chance.
No, in the meantime, the menfolk of Yisra’el have been whoring around with the women of Mo’av, who invited them to make sacrifices to Ba’al (Ba’al Pe’or, specifically), which of course they did. This local cult becomes quite popular, and this makes God mad. God tells Mosheh to take the ringleaders of this little escapade out and publicly impale them, to make an example out of them. If sweet, smitten Bil’am only knew!
Mosheh instructs his chieftains to do this. Just as he’s doing so, some guy with a Midyanite woman on his arm swaggers over to his bros, right in front of Mosheh and the community of people who are bewailing this situation!
Pinhas, son of El’azar (son of Aharon) — that is, the new high priest’s son — sees this, and he stands up from the assembly, picks up a spear, follows that man into the chamber they were entering and stabs them both through the belly. This display of righteous wrath is enough to cap the deaths from the plague God sent to punish this latest communal crime at a mere 24,000 people.
And THIS is how Parashat Balak ends!
It would be understandable to wonder why that nasty little part had to be included here at the end of the lovely Parashat Balak, but I don’t think it’s too mysterious. The foreign prophet of God had a nice, lofty view of the Israelites. It would be nice if everyone else saw us like Bil’am did. But of course, no people deserves to be so literally lionized. People are people. And the people reading this story, as descendants of the people in this story, should confront the full complexity of who we are.
🫏
