Balak 5786
How Goodly Are Thy Tents
This week we are reading Parashat Balak, Num 22:2–25:9. (Welcome back on board, Diaspora readers.) Let’s start today with these words, traditionally the first words one is supposed to say after entering the synagogue for morning prayers:
Num 24:5 How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel! [KJV]
מַה־טֹּ֥בוּ אֹהָלֶ֖יךָ יַעֲקֹ֑ב מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶ֖יךָ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
mah-tovu ohalekha ya’aqov mishk’notekha yisrael
These words that begin Jewish communal prayer every morning were, of course, written by a non-Jew, by Balaam, the famous non-Jewish prophet. Some of you, perhaps not everyone, know that Balaam is the first biblical character we encounter whom we know from ancient texts, outside the Bible.
There is an earlier archaeological mention of David found at Tel Dan, but David is not going to come along in the text of the Bible for quite some time. There’s no one in the books of Genesis, Exodus, or Leviticus whom we know from a tradition that’s not in the Bible but that’s as old as the Bible, not until we get to Balaam.
What am I talking about? There is a text, written on a physical object that can be dated to the end of the 8th-c. BCE, that mentions Balaam, who was evidently quite a famous non-Jewish prophet, just as he is portrayed in our story. It was found at Tell Deir Alla, due east of Nablus but on the Jordanian side of the river (take Rte. 65 when you visit). I have a two-page spread on it on pp. 140–141 of the Numbers volume of the beautiful new “Land of Israel Tanakh” series from Koren. (I don’t get anything if you purchase it from them, but don’t let that stop you.)
So … what kind of a guy was Balaam? Following Jewish tradition, perhaps I ought to be calling him Bil’am ha-Rasha: Balaam the wicked. He is most definitely considered to be an early entrant in the long line of enemies of the Jews that has continued from ancient times up to the present day. Is that really what one would expect, though, if the only thing we knew about Balaam were chapters 22, 23, and 24 of the book of Numbers?
Those are the chapters where he blesses Israel, in accordance with his role as a prophet of YHWH and very much against his own economic interests. He was hired to curse Israel, and here he is singing “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!”
Balaam is mentioned a number of other places in the Bible and it seems that the attitude toward Balaam evolved over time. When you look at the prophet Micah — presumably one of the earlier sources — God has him announce:
Mic 6:5 My people,
Remember what Balak king of Moab
Plotted against you,
And how Balaam son of Beor
Responded to him.
[Recall your passage]
From Shittim to Gilgal—
And you will recognize
The gracious acts of the LORD. [NJPS]
This very much seems to imply, as a reading of our parashah would indicate, that Balak was the enemy of the Jews and Balaam did God’s bidding in blessing them. Balaam was not one of us, but he was a good guy. He was on our side because God used him in that way.
When you read the book of Deuteronomy, however, things begin to skew around. Balaam’s hat begins to turn a little bit less white:
Deut 23:4 No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted into the congregation of the LORD; none of their descendants, even in the tenth generation, shall ever be admitted into the congregation of the LORD, 5 because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey after you left Egypt, and because they hired Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor of Aram-naharaim, to curse you.— 6 But the LORD your God refused to heed Balaam; instead, the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, for the LORD your God loves you.
So it would seem that Deuteronomy’s take is that Balaam indeed tried, or at least wanted, to curse Israel, but God would not do it.
In Joshua, the next book of the Deuteronomic history, we read this:
Josh. 24:9 Thereupon Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab, made ready to attack Israel. He sent for Balaam son of Beor to curse you, 10 but I refused to listen to Balaam; he had to bless you, and thus I saved you from him.
You can already see that Balaam is turning into a bad guy, someone who in fact did want to curse Israel. Numbers 31, which we’ll be reading two weeks from now, tells us in plain Hebrew that the Israelites killed Balaam when they wreaked YHWH’s vengeance on Midian. Moses blew his stack! But not for the reason our reading of Numbers 22–24 might have suggested to us:
Num. 31:14 Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of thousands and the officers of hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign. 15 Moses said to them, “You have spared every female! 16 Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so that the LORD’S community was struck by the plague.
That is, by now Moses is accusing Balaam not merely of being perfectly ready to curse the Israelites and indeed wanting to do so, but going ahead and inventing a nefarious plan to lure the Israelites into idolatry. See the midrash if you want more details of this scene, which would have fit quite nicely before the last verse of Numbers 24 if it had actually occurred.
It’s also a little suspicious — it’s very suspicious — that this God was named Peor with a P and Balaam’s father was named Beor with a B. The Moabites who invite the Israelites “to the sacrifices for their god” in Num 25:2 should really be inviting them to sacrifices for Chemosh, the actual god of Moab, whom we have already read about last week in Num 21:29. Instead, that role is played at the end of our parashah by Baal-peor. So would seem to be some nepotism involved.
What we actually see is a range of biblical responses to Balaam:
in Micah, the notion that Balaam seems to have prevented the harm Balak wanted to do;
in our parashah, an expansion of that perspective, with four of the most remarkable poetic oracles in the Bible, yet also a strange scene where Balaam is trying to go forward and an angel whom only his donkey can see is blocking him;
Deuteronomy suggests that in fact Balaam did want to curse the Jews; and
just a few chapters from now, in Numbers 31, we will find Balaam cooking up a plan to lure the Israelites into idolatry.
There’s no obvious reason why the Balaam of our story would want to do that. Balaam is a prophet of the Israelites’ own God and has been saying the right thing all along:
Num 22:38 Balaam said to Balak, “And now that I have come to you, have I the power to speak freely? I can utter only the word that God puts into my mouth.”
He was a prophet — as, again, we know from non-biblical sources too — and a prophet’s job is to say what God wants him to say.
Rabbinic literature turned Balaam into an extremely wicked person, one of the most wicked in all of Jewish history, but for me the bottom line is that he gave us the beautiful words, set to so many beautiful melodies, mah tovu ohalekha ya’akov mishk’notekha yisrael. Shai Agnon thought so too (or at least the narrator of his story “The Sense of Smell” thought so. I’ll give him the last word:
Balaam the wicked — no one wickeder than he, who advised the daughters of Moab to whore themselves, through which advice 158,600 Israelites perished — by virtue of having spoken in Hebrew, and in praise of Israel, he earned the right to have a section of the Torah called by his name, as well as the right to have all Jews begin their prayers each morning with the phrase “How beautiful thy tents,” Balaam’s word of praise for Israel.1
My translation from the original Hebrew:
בלעם הרשע שלא הרשיע אדם כמותו, שנתן עצה לזנות אל בנות מואב ואבדו על ידיו חמש עשרה רבוא ושמונת אלפים ושש מאות מישראל, בשכר שדיבר בלשון הקודש ודיבר בשבחן של ישראל זכה שנקבעה על שמו פרשה בתורה וזכה שכל ישראל פותחין תפילתם בבוקר בפסוק מה טובו שבו שיבח בלעם את ישראל.