Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 22, Balaam the Sorcerer

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 22, Balaam the Sorcerer

- So ladies and gentlemen, we start up again after the break. I hope you all had a relaxing time and we come back to… Hold on, I’ve got something in the way here that can’t get out of the way. How I get this out of the way? I hope you all had a relaxing . Not too much stress, not too much hard work. And I gather from people who are travelling back from the various destinations that they are overwhelmed at the airports, everybody rushing to get home. So today we are continuing with the book of Numbers, , sorry . And we ended last time with the arrival of the children of Israel on the east bank of the River Jordan. And they’re moving up from the south from where they were somewhere closer to lot. They’re coming up against local tribes, some of whom are unfriendly but not aggressive, some of whom are aggressive. And those who are aggressive, the Israelites managed to overcome them, defeat them. And so we ended last week or two weeks ago with chapter 22 of Numbers. And the first verse is and the children of Israel journeyed and they encamped on the plains of Moab, across the river Jordan, opposite opposite Jericho. So they’ve moved all the way up across up the area, which is the Red Sea, the Dead Sea rather. And now they are opposite Jericho and that’s where they’re encamped, and they’re not moving anywhere. And that is where we ended last week. And this week we start with verse two. And that is the part we read in the synagogue. And that is concerning this gentleman called Balak. But Balak happens to be a very minor actor in what we are going to read about because the main person in the whole of this session is a man called Balaam and Balaam or Balaam as somehow he’s called in the English translation.

Balaam is a very well known character, not just in the Bible. There interestingly enough, in 1960, was it 19? Yes, it must have been 1967 in a place called Deir ‘Alla in Jordan, they discovered a text praising a magician called Balaam. Nothing to do with the Jewish people whatsoever. So here we have this early record of this magician called Balaam who is called upon to remove problems, to solve issues, to get rid of enemies who knows all kinds of magic spells. And he is a major figure although the Deir 'Alla text comes a little if you like, later than the period we’re talking about the invasion of Canaan, which is about a hundred or two before that. Nevertheless, dates in archaeology are arguable and either way it doesn’t really matter. All that we are saying is that Balaam was a well-known non-Jewish figure. He then plays an important part in the Torah and in what we’re going to read today. But before we get to Balaam the Magician, we start with verse two. And this guy called Balak. And Balak son of somebody would call Zippor some called in Hebrew. but we don’t know if that was the origin of his name. All that the Israelites had done to the Amorites. Remember on their way up, they had to turn away from the descendants of Essau 'cause they were family. And they came into contact with of Bashan of the king of Bashan and Sihon the king of the Amorites. And they defeated both of them. They conquered their territory, they took over their territory and temporarily they settled in their territory.

So Balak sees all this and then it says And Moabites who are descended from actually Lot. They saw these people and they were very frightened. And Moab as a tribe were very frightened. because the children of Israel were coming in in significant numbers into their area and they felt threatened. And in verse four, Moab then turns to , the elders of Midian. Now Midianites are not family, they’re not descended in the way that the descendants of Essa were. We have the Midianites. And so Moab, we assume this is turns to Midian and says . These people are licking around us, they are encroaching on our territory. They are coming closer. The way an ox hoovers up the grass that it eats. the grass of the field. happened to be the king of Moab at this moment. Now is Moab and Midian the same thing or is there an alliance between Moab and the Midianites? But either way at this moment it is Balak who is the king of the Moabites, but in fact as we’re going to say it’s Midian that are going to represent the biggest threat. So in verse five, so he sends messengers to Balaam . Balaam son of whoever Beor is. Pethor, it’s a place called Pethor . And he’s by the Euphrates.

The river at that time and that part of the world was the Euphrates and that’s where he lives. And in fact that’s where comes from. So that confirms it. And he says, look, these people have come out of Egypt. They’re They’re covering the surface of the earth rather like the locusts covered the area of Egypt during the 10 plagues. They’re covering like locusts, they’re a pest, they’re a danger. And verse six and therefore . We want you to come. This people. Now the term comes from the word which is cursed, but there are lots of different words in the Hebrew language for cursing. is the most obvious one. But there are altogether six words for what cursing can be. So there are different kinds of curses, different kinds of spells. So because he is stronger than me. Maybe I can somehow attack him and defeat him. and drive him out of the land. because I know Whoever you Balaam you bless is going to be blessed. And at the same time, . You are is another word for curse. Not but . You are will be cursed in different ways. So altogether in verse seven, Go along to visit him. And magic in their hands. In other words, they’re taking all the spells they have, all the tricks they know they’re coming to bring to him to see what he can do. And they come to Balaam and they tell him what Balaam has said. So they are merging and the implication of all this is that Balaam is the king both of Midian and of Moab of the two have now been integrated under his control. So he’s the guy, there’s no other leader of the other tribes, only this man Balak. So they come and they approach Balaam and in verse eight, Balaam then says to him, . Just stay here the night .

And I will return to you with some important information. as God speaks to me. And notice how he says God and using the , the Hebrew ideal absolute name of God, not the or other terms that might be applied to other gods as well. This is specifically that he says, I take my instructions from . I might not be an Israelites, but I recognise, and that’s an important indication that this guy Balaam seems to be a special character. sorry Balaam. And now he mentions that it’s the Moabites who are staying with Balaam. So regardless of whether he used now it’s Elohim, the more detached version. And he says pierce to him and he says, . Who are these people with you? Of course God knows one assumes He knows, but it’s a nice way of engaging in conversation. Verse 10, and Balaam turns to God and he says, . It’s this guy Balak, king of Moab. And he sent them to me and he sent to me with this message and the messages in verse 11, The people are coming out of Egypt. Now this is you notice we keep on talking about repetition here. There’s so much repetition in the Torah, it’s emphasis and it’s poetry. So this is the third time we’ve mentioned they’re coming out of Egypt, and they’re covering the face of the earth. And now therefore I want you to come and , This is another curse So we’ve had three so far. I want you to curse him for me. Sorry, I’ve moved my screen across.

How’d I do that? You, I must bring you back to zoom out. I dunno how I’ve managed to do this, but I’m getting it somehow rather. Anyway, so here we are. I just have to get this back in. My computer doesn’t always behave the way it’s supposed to be behave. So verse 12. Verse 12 is And God says to Balaam, I do not want you to go with them. I don’t want you to curse the people. Because this people is blessed. So I think it’s pretty clear what God wants and He says, I definitely don’t want you to go because these people are cursed. So in the morning after this night encounter with God, he turns to the principles, the ambassadors who come from Balak and he says, God does not give me permission to go with you. So it’s very clear. So now it’s the Moabites getting up and going back to Balak and saying, Balaam refuses to come with us. Well Balak is not a man to be trifled with and although he gets this initial rebuttal, he’s not going to accept it lying down. So Balak continues. to send messages, many ones more than before. and more important. So he’s sending his top team, not just a second team. and they come to Balaam. And they say to him, So says Don’t hold back from coming to me. I will honour you amazingly. Call whatever you ask me to do, I’m going to do. I just want you to come and curse Verse 18. He says to the messages of Balak. Even if you give me a house full of gold and silver, I cannot transgress my God. Whether it’s a little thing or a big thing.

So again, we have this image of Balak of Balaam as a God fearing, God respecting guy, a good guy. Verse 19. So now Stay here another night. And I will find out. If God has got anything else, then tell me. Maybe God will change his mind a bit. Verse 20. So God appears to Balaam. at night. He says to him. If the men have come who have called to you, You may go with them. But you have to do exactly what I tell you to do. Now God’s changing his mind. God changes his mind quite often in the Torah. I think it’s very important theologically to recognise this concept and maybe it’s us misunderstanding God or some other form of communication. But otherwise it seems pretty clear that God has said to Balaam, you may go. You just have to do what I tell you to say. Balaam got up in the morning. And he saddled his donkey. Now you’ll remember how many times before have we had Abraham saddling his donkey. People saddle their donkeys all the time, and it’s a sign of their enthusiasm that they are actually setting their donkey or taking their car out of the garage, but he is doing it personally. And these are all very, very powerful rich men who have plenty of servants who can do it. So the term as used of the forefathers and is used now of Balaam is another way of denoting enthusiasm. So he is really, if you like psyched up to do this. In verse 22. And all of a sudden God is angry that he’s going. Why is God angry if God told him to go? I want you to look at two words. I’d like you to go back to verse 20. In verse 20 it says, And God got up and he went with Balaam at night. If the men have come to call you, Look at that word . is a conjunctive. The heavens and the earth . It can mean to go with, but not necessarily to identify with.

But now look at the next verse. Balaam got up in the morning. And he settled his donkey. And he goes im with. Now im is identifying a husband, a man and a wife. The and im together are very important. It’s identification. So Balaam in a sense now is contravening the wishes of God because in his mind he now is enthusiastic about what he’s going to do. Verse 22. God is angry. And stands in the way and angel of God. This is the only time the word is used in the Torah and it’s only used once other case later on, much later on after Babylon, the influence of Babylon in the other later books of the Bible. And here is just a verb. It’s not a personification, it’s not the Satan, it’s the is to block him. So you see how this term starts off perfectly simply as anything that prevents, excuse me, anything that prevents me doing what I want to do into the image of somebody that we have in paradise lost or indeed in the Book of Job. El Satan as a figure wandering around. Balaam is riding on his donkey. And he has these two young men travelling with him. And the ass can see this angel or this element or whatever it is standing in the road that is with a sword drawn and obviously blocking the way. And the poor donkey turns off the road. Goes down into the fields at the side. Feels sorry for the poor donkey, he sees something. But Balaam can’t. For all the greatness of Balaam as this amazing magician with world renowned all over the internet, everybody knows Balaam he can’t see, but the donkey can.

Gets worse. So in verse 23, Balaam starts whacking his poor old donkey. in verse 25, the poor ass sees this angel, and he pressures against the wall. So you know he’s pushing and he’s shoving and there’s simply a wall there and he is pressing Balaam up against the wall and squashing his leg and and poor old Balaam’s leg is now jammed against the wall, and he keeps on hitting this poor old donkey. And meanwhile, verse 26, And the king, this angel guy is coming closer and closer. As a very narrow passage and he’s in the way. And there’s no way to move either way. In verse 27, the poor as sees this angel and he collapses. He lies down under Balaam and Balaam is furious, and he takes his stick and he beats this poor old donkey. In verse 28, God opens the mouth of the ass and the ass starts speaking. And the ass says Balaam. “What have I done to you that you have hit me three times?” Notice is the term we use to describe the three main festivals of and they’re called the the three if you like pilgrim festivals. 'cause everybody went on by foot up to Jerusalem. That comes later of course. But here that term is applied to the donkey speech. It’s as though it’s the donkey that is giving us some of our traditions if you want to look at it in that humorous way. And then the ass carries on and he goes further and he says, “Why are you doing this?” Sorry, Balaam turns to the ass. Sorry Balaam turns to the ass and he says, “Why are you doing this? Because you are making fun of me. If I have a sword in my hand, I would kill you for what you are doing. You are thinking you control me that.” And the ass turns round and says to Balaam, carries on a conversation.

And the ass says to him, . “I’m your ass and you’ve ridden on me from the moment you have been riding horses or asses until this day. Have I ever as a matter of habit done something like this to you before?” Balaam is shocked and he turns around and he says, “No it’s true; never happened before.” At that moment . God reveals, opens the eyes of Balaam. He sees the angel standing there on the way with his sword drawn, and he bows down on his face before him. verse 32. And the king, the angel of God says, “Why did you beat your poor old ass three times again?” I the angel am the person that have been blocking all this. I’ve been causing this. to do something that otherwise I would not have wanted to do. That is a very controversial translation of the last three literally means because I’ve been forced to do something that this path is not a path that I really wanted to do. in verse 33 And it’s the ass who saw me He turned away three times. Notice the repetition. You know if he wouldn’t have turned away, I would’ve killed you and kept the ass alive. I value the ass even more than them. That is the speech.

It’s an amazing speech that’s going on. An interaction between the two of them, the angel on the one hand and the ass on the other. And this question of the ass talking is a very interesting issue. Why and how does an ass talk? It’s not the natural normal thing. The rabbis of the Talmud are concerned about this. They want to find an explanation. And there is a famous of the rabbis which says there were certain things that were not the natural part of creation, but were created in the last minute before Shabbat came in in the sixth day of creation uniquely by God for a special purpose. Another example was the earthquake that opened up the earth to swallow the rebellious . And the other thing was the mouth of the ass. So the rabbi saw this as a naturally enough, an unusual, not a normal thing, not the way of the world because in general the opinion of the rabbis was that God created the world with what we would call good things and bad things, whether which can flood or volcanoes which can kill and destroy. But everything was part of the natural process of the world, which is only bad when it gets in the way and affects human beings. So how do you explain this remarkable phenomenon? You are explaining that we preserve to God the right to do whatever God feels like doing.

So with God, you can’t win. God is always right; you can’t argue with him. But in a sense this is part of the theology of God, the theology of this super force, which if you like is above and beyond any normal physicality that we experience in the world and therefore to apply physical qualities to God does not make sense. So we have to accept there are things beyond our can, things that we don’t know that go on in this world dimensions beyond us. And that is how we treat this concept of God. So the ass has made an ass of Balaam. Balaam is this magical guy with all the control over everything and everybody worships. He can’t work out things that is see things that his ass can. So we can see the limitation of Balaam. So we shouldn’t get too excited about the idea that this Balaam is all powerful, but he certainly seems to have some powers. And it’s the some powers of Balaam that we are now going to see. Verse 35, now it’s the not God, but this kind of agency or this vision who turns to Balaam and says, okay, You may go with the men that you want to. So we’ve changed, as I mentioned before, initially we said God said go Go with the men, accompany them; don’t identify with them and then it’s because he identified with them that God was angry and got the ass to block everything and to stop him in his tracks. But now the angel is saying it’s okay for you to go You can identify with them. In other words, I understand that you may want to see the Israelites as a threat. Everybody hates the Israelites and have done ever since.

So I understand that you can identify with the men who oppose and want to destroy Israel. I get that, but You could only speak what comes from God. So the words you say have to come from God, and you have no option on this one. So Balaam goes in identifying with Balak and verse 36. and Balak heard that Balaam was coming And he goes out to meet him at Ir-moab at the city of Moab. Now is that where he was before or somewhere where he’s coming now. But the city of Moab at the borders of Arnon. The edge of the boundary of his territory as opposed to the Israelite territory. We’ve had the name Arnon before when we had poetry a few weeks ago about the travels of the children of Israel through the desert. And Balak says to Balaam, look I asked you to come. Why did you not come when I asked you the first time? Can I not reward you? Don’t you know how rich I am, how powerful I am, how magnificent I am? How come you didn’t accept me right away after I offered you money? And you are a man who takes money. So Balaam then actually fesses up to Balak and he says he made It’s true I have come. I want to know what I can speak because I can only speak whatever God puts into my mouth. So I have to be honest with you, I’ve come and I’m prepared to do my best, but I want you to know that I am circumscribed, I’m limited in what I can do because I can only say what God is going to put into my mouth.

So Balaam goes with Balak to a place called the town of the areas or named It’s a Hebrew name. Verse 40. And so Balak sets about offering sacrifices. And these sacrifices are then sent to Balaam and the officers that are with him. Now what does that mean? He sent sacrifices. Because normally is a religious ritual. So is he performing a religious ritual or is he just providing the men with a huge big banquet to put them in a good mood before we go to the next stage? So this interesting interaction between Balak and Balaam is a kind of a dance. A dance in which you come forward and you go back. You reject and then you accept. It’s showing the toing and froing of fate, of history, of magic, of all the things in our world that are unstable. There is something unstable here because Balaam himself is an unstable person. On the one hand, he is a devotee of God and a good guy. And on the other hand, he’s prepared to get involved with magic to curse the Israelites. Verse 41, it’s morning. And Balak takes Balaam. And he takes to a place called is a high place where you sacrifice the gods. Interestingly enough, throughout the period of the kingdoms of Judea, there were , there were still high places, which shows that people, even though they were Israelite in religion officially, they kept their options open. But these are the high places of baal. And baal is the god, the pagan God of this whole area, the absolute top guy. And from this high position, he looks down to see where the people are, and he sees how many they are. And that is where we get to verse 23.

Now, sorry, chapter 23, Balaam says to Balak So now I want you to build seven altars And I want you to find seven cows, and seven rams. So now it’s Balaam who once to get involved in the religious side. It’s as though he’s saying, look, you know, for me to work my magic, I have to appeal to my God. Or maybe it’s to your God, my God, maybe. It’s open, we don’t know. But he is now asking for an act of religious worship. So And so Balak did whatever Balaam asked. And he offers up these animals on the altar and Balaam then turns to Balak and he says I want you to stand by your sacrifice to your God. So in a sense he’s saying, I want you to involve your God as well And then I have to go off and meditate somewhere or Maybe I will encounter the real God And God will appear to me And tell me what I am going to do and then I will tell you what He wants me to say. And then unusual word, this word it doesn’t occur anywhere else in the Torah here. And he went off either as the translation says alone or to a special place where he thought the magic might work or God will appear to him. So we are going through the theatricals now, the theatre of offering sacrifices to appease the gods, to appeal to the gods, to both gods and to the God of Israel who is and in a sense it looks like people who read palms, this magician wants to cover his bets. He wants to make sure that if he suggests his one thing is going to happen, maybe not maybe something else.

Or if he predicts that there is illness in the family, he will always got 50/50 chance of it going wrong or going right. It shows if you like, the rigmarole and the ritual of people using magic. And this is where I’m going to stop for today and turn to the questions because next week we are going to go into an amazing poetical of force in this tug of war between Balaam, Balak and God. And it is one of the most important chapters of the Torah. But now let’s have a look at the questions and answers. Let’s bring them up and see where we go. Sorry, it’s not coming the way I want it to come. Let me, let me… Hold on. Question and answer. Here we are. I don’t know why I have this problem here, my text and ah, here we’ve got it. Okay, so I’m sorry I’m having trouble with the text. I really don’t know why this is going this way. But nevertheless, thank you for being tolerant.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Richard asks, “What is the relationship of Moab and Midian?”

A: Well, the first obvious answer is that they are two very separate tribes that live in close proximity to each other. But again, the commentators like to suggest that there was more to that, there was either a military takeover, one of the other, or that they merged or that they combined under the threat. But they were neighbours who both of them were worried about the advance of the Israelites in their direction.

Q: Romaine, “In these narratives, is the language more important than the characters who see more naive?”

A: I think you’ve made an excellent point. The excellent point is that this is all about language, about how language can be used to curse or to bless. It has this strange bifurcation and therefore we have to treat language with enormous respect, which is one of the reasons there are so many laws in the Torah about misusing language, abusing language, language being used to attack people, to demean people, to confuse people and to mislead people. So the whole of the Torah in a sense is poetic language. Some of it is legal language, some of it’s historical, but it is a language of poetry, and it’s an amazing language. It’s a language which is going to go on to expand through the prophets. And later on to a very, very sophisticated level. You read the the later books of the Bible, the book of Job, for example, all the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, And you’ll see very, very complicated language with words that don’t occur in the five books of Moses. So clearly the Torah is an earlier iteration of language, but language is terribly important. Just think of God speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai. But the method of communication, even through language needs other aspects to it. The tone that It’s the tone, how you speak, how you present it, the context. All these are features that make language so important, a human tool. In fact, at some stage, and I can’t remember who it was, but certainly in the Jewish tradition, you have the idea that man, human beings are speaking animals, the animal that is that speaks. And that’s what distinguishes us from other forms of animals in the world. So this is all about language and all about poetry. And this is what we’re going to see next week when we focus on the poetry that Balaam is going to speak and talk about in his performance. So this is also a performance, and you might even say it’s an entertainment, it’s a drama with different characters. Included in character is a horse, which might remind you of Shakespeare am Midsummer Night’s Dream. So this is all about language.

Richard says, “Snake talking in the garden of Eden.” Now the snake is not described as Satan. That is a much later projection back to the snake. The snake is certainly a devious character. And just as you have the ass speaking, so you have the snake speaking. So your point might be, and I’m not sure which one you are after, is it that the snake is associated with Satan or is it that the snake is talking? But either way, yes, there is a connection between the two that both of them are, if you like supernatural. And one of the other things we are learning from this story about Balaam is there are supernatural powers that can be harnessed by other people. And that is the danger. Can you harness them for good or can you harness them for bad?

Thank you, Carla.

And Susan, the family of in Midian had no influence with Susan, you make an excellent point. Midian indeed is the family of Jethro. He was the high priest of Midian, which again is the location again far from Egypt when Moses has to run away from Egypt, and he ends up in Midian. But clearly what this is suggesting is that Midian as a tribe has been influenced by maybe by Moab, but it’s not the same tribe that had Jethro as the man in charge. If it would’ve been, this wouldn’t have happened. But remember, the Torah also talks about the relationship between Jethro and the Israelites and the question of whether they were with them throughout their travelling in the wilderness or whether they joined them when they came to the land of Canaan because Moses invited him to join them. And so it could be that he had abandoned Midian under the influence of Moses and therefore had set up by himself. And that’s why sometimes they are described as the Canaanites, the Canaan and not the Midian because they went independent at some stage thanks to Jethro.

And finally, Israel, once again, thank you for listening and thank you for your comments. And thank you everybody. We will continue this saga next week.