Bilam the Prophet

Parshat Balak

This parsha feature an individual who in my opinion is one of the more interesting characters in the Torah.  The basic story is that the king of Moab, Balak hires a prophet Bilam (most commonly transliterated to Balaam) to curse the Israelites because he fears that they are about to invade Moabite land. Bilam warns Balak that he can only say what God tells him to, but Balak hires him anyway.  Bilam gets to a place where he can see the Israelites and instead of cursing the Israelites, he blesses them.  This repeats itself twice more and Bilam provides four separate blessings on the Israelites.  Balak is angry and dismisses him and Bilam returns home.  Later he's referred to in what is essentially a byline, noting that he was killed by the Israelites in battle.  There are some parts to the story that are very confusing, and we'll look at them.  After that, I'll explain why Blam is one of the most interesting figures in the Torah.

Really a Good Guy?

Bilam says a lot of things that on face value make it seems like he was actually a good guy. When the messengers first approach Bilam and ask him to curse them, he tells them to stay the night.  He communes with God who tells him not to go, and then (Num 22:13):

And Balaam rose up in the morning, and said unto the princes of Balak: 'Get you into your land; for the LORD refuseth to give me leave to go with you.'

When the messengers from Balak return, the second time, the following conversation plays out (Num 22:18-21):

18 And Balaam answered and said unto the servants of Balak: 'If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of the LORD my God, to do any thing, small or great. 19 Now therefore, I pray you, tarry ye also here this night, that I may know what the LORD will speak unto me more.' 20 And God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him: 'If the men are come to call thee, rise up, go with them; but only the word which I speak unto thee, that shalt thou do.' 21 And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab.

At this point, Bilam looks to be as upright as any Israelite prophet.  He only goes with Balak's messengers when God specifically commands him to. After this conversation there's an interlude story which we'll come back to in a bit.  When Balak gets to Bilam, the following story plays out (Num 23:3-6):

3 And Balaam said unto Balak: 'Stand by thy burnt-offering, and I will go; peradventure the LORD will come to meet me; and whatsoever He showeth me I will tell thee.' And he went to a bare height. 4 And God met Balaam; and he said unto Him: 'I have prepared the seven altars, and I have offered up a bullock and a ram on every altar.' 5 And the LORD put a word in Balaam's mouth, and said: 'Return unto Balak, and thus thou shalt speak.' 6 And he returned unto him, and, lo, he stood by his burnt-offering, he, and all the princes of Moab.

Again, Bilam is working as the conduit from God to Balak, just as any Israelite prophet might. His methods are even similar, offering sacrifices to appease God.  This same type of narrative repeats itself two more times.  After this Bilam offers a prophesy regarding the future, and then leaves.

We don't hear from them again until much later when the Israelites attack and slaughter the Midianites.  But that requires a section with a different title.

Really a Bad Guy?

When the Israelites slay the Midianites they specifically kill Bilam.  The following is said (Num 31:15-17)

15 And Moses said unto them: 'Have ye saved all the women alive? 16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to revolt so as to break faith with the LORD in the matter of Peor, and so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD. 17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

I'll suppress the urge to go off on a tangent here about the biblical commandments for wanton slaughter and genocide (as well as apparent sexual slavery of minors).  We'll deal with those in later weeks.  Instead, note that the Torah here attributes the seduction of the Israelites to Bilam.  This is despite there being absolutely no indication in the entirety of the story of Bilam of him providing such counsel.  After Bilam leaves, the next time we hear his name is when the Israelites kill him.  Obviously, this looks like a hit job on Bilam.  But why?

Before we get there, let's look at some other mentions of him.  He shows up in the Devarim (Deuteronomy) recap with the following verses (Deut. 23:4-7)

4 An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation shall none of them enter into the assembly of the LORD for ever; 5 because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Aram-naharaim, to curse thee. 6 Nevertheless the LORD thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the LORD thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the LORD thy God loved thee. 7 Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever.

A very similar story is repeated by Yehoshua (Joshua) at the very end of that book (Josh 14:9-10)

9 Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel; and he sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you. 10 But I would not hearken unto Balaam; therefore he even blessed you; so I delivered you out of his hand.

These are not as negative as the earlier excerpt we looked at where Bilam is repsonsible for inciting the Israelites to fornicate with the Midianite women.  But it puts more agency into Bilam wanting to curse the Israelites than seemed to be warranted in the first story.  Chalk this up to another negative view of Bilam.

Micha (Micah) has a more neutral view it seems, he says (Micah 6:5)

5 O My people, remember now what Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him; from Shittim unto Gilgal, that ye may know the righteous acts of the LORD.

Here Balak is the evil one and Bilam is credited with rebuking him. A similarly neutral view is in Nechemiah 13:2.  Before we go further, we need to look at the final view of Bilam.

Really an Idiot?

The interlude story I mentioned earlier portrays Bilam in a third light, that of a fool.  In case you aren't familiar with the story, I'll give a quick recap.  Somehow, despite Bilam leaving with Balak's messengers, he gets separated from them (no explanation given) and is suddenly alone. Bilam is riding his donkey, and the donkey keeps on seeing a messenger (malach, commonly translated as angel) of God.  Bilam himself cannot see it.  Three times the donkey tries to move away from the messenger and each time Bilam gets angry with it and tries to whip it back onto the road.  Only at the end, does God allow him to see the messenger.  Bilam is chastised by the angel, and then he says:

34 And Balaam said unto the angel of the LORD: 'I have sinned; for I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me; now therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me back.' 35 And the angel of the LORD said unto Balaam: 'Go with the men; but only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak.' So Balaam went with the princes of Balak

This is another hit job, but of a different type.  It makes Balaam out to be a second tier prophet, one that's literally dumber than the donkey he rode in on.  Commenting on this, Kugel says:

[T]his episode [with the donkey] seems intended to portray Balaam in a negative light: the great seer cannot even perceive what his donkey can!  Take that incident out, scholars say, and you have a smoothly running narrative that presents Balaam altogether positively, as someone who, from the beginning, knew that Israel was blessed by God.  Although he went to Moab as Balak requested, Balaam nevertheless warned the king time and again that he could say only what God allowed [1].

What's going on.  Why the positive story about Bilam, why the negative views in other stories?  Why do we have this donkey interlude, where Bilam's claim to prophecy seems to be highly suspect.  Furthermore, if we go even later in time, into the Talmudic commentaries, we find the hit job on Bilam gets even worse.  He's depicted as the worst of individuals, out for personal profit, double dealing, a real villain.

Who was Bilam?

To answer the questions posed in the last section, we need to actually learn who Bilam was.  Something like this is usually nearly impossible to do, but Bilam isn't just some minor biblical persona.  He was an actual prophet lauded by the Moabites.  And we know this from the Moabites themselves.  The "Deir Alla" inscription, which dates fairly early, in the 8th or 7th centuries BCE, possibly before some of these stories were written, mentions:

[Balaam ben Beor] was a seer of the gods.  The gods came to him in the night, and he saw a vision like an oracle of [the god] El. Then they said to [Balaa]m ben Beor: Thus he will do [ ] hereafter, which [ ].  And Balaam arose the next day... [2]

The story has some details which are similar to the biblical story.  Specifically, the idea that Bilam only seems to speak to God at night.  He makes the messengers wait overnight so he can talk to God.  He appears to only have prophetic dreams.  The rest of the story is completely different, it has nothing to do with the Israelites.  It reads as a homage to the prophet.

Knowing this we can start to reconstruct who Bilam was, and maybe begin to understand why the stories were written.  We know that he was a prophet of considerable reknown.  He was probably held in respect not only by the Moabites, but possibly also by the early Israelites.  Therefore, the first story of Bilam where he blesses the Israelites, was probably written to claim that even the great Moabite prophet was actually on the Israelite's side.

However, as time went on, respect for Bilam dropped considerably.  For one, the idea of Israel's god, communing with a Moabite was probably anathema to the Israelite prophets.  They wanted it known that they were the only ones who were able to talk to God.  So they invented some more stories.  Bilam was now responsible for the incident at Ba'al Peor, and he was so incompetent of a prophet that he wasn't even able to see God's messenger when his donkey could.  The purposes of these stories is to discredit a prophet that they no longer had any reason to respect.  His positive prophesies on Israel were a one time thing, a divine miracle.  Otherwise, the guy was worthless.  A charlatan and a rogue.

We don't really know what else Bilam did, or any of his other prophecies.  What we do know is that he was unfortunate to work for the side which has a lot less surviving works.  The victors write the history, and Bilam gets defined by the later Israelite authors.  Therefore, he comes out as a villain and a punchline to a joke.  Just another way how biblical authors used propagandic stories to assert their worldview.

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1. Kugel, "How to Read the Bible" Free Press, 2006, p. 339 ^

2. Kugel, p. 338 ^