Let Someone Else Praise You
There is a fundamental question to be asked about the whole perplexing story of Balaam. Why is it here? Why was it included in the biblical narrative? Why does the Torah devote significant space to the words of a shaman who may or may not have been a genuine prophet? What does the episode signify? If God wished Israel to be blessed, why use a pagan prophet, and one who, as we see later in the story (Num. 31:16), did not wish them well?
The question is deepened by the fact that the episode is regarded by Tanakh as a whole as a highly significant one. It is referred to time and again – by Moses in Deuteronomy, by Joshua at the end of his mission, later by the prophet Micah, and later still, after the Babylonian exile and return, by Nehemiah:
However, the Lord your God did not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. (Deut. 23:6)
When Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab, prepared to fight against Israel, he sent for Balaam son of Beor to put a curse on you. But I would not listen to Balaam, so he blessed you again and again, and I delivered you out of his hand. (Josh. 24:9–10)
My people, remember what Balak king of Moab plotted and what Balaam son of Beor answered. (Mic. 6:5)
On that day the book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people and there it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should be admitted into the assembly of God, because they had not met the Israelites with food and water but had hired Balaam to call a curse down on them. Our God, however, turned the curse into a blessing. (Neh. 13:2).
The answer is, surely, that some basic themes of Jewish faith are at stake. First, the Torah is telling us that no supernatural force directed against Israel can succeed, that “the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Ps. 121:4). God protects Israel from those who seek to do it harm. Balak and Balaam must repeatedly discover the absurdity of trying to curse Israel against the wishes of God.
Second, we are being reminded of a truth about prophecy. As God had already said to Moses at the burning bush when he said he was not a man of words: “‘Who gave man a mouth?’ asked God. ‘Who makes a person dumb or deaf? Who gives a person sight or makes him blind? Is it not I – God? Now go! I will be with your mouth and teach you what to say’” (Ex. 4:12).
God speaks through those He chooses, as He chooses, and when He chooses. What is important is what is said, not who is saying it. The word of God is not the word of the prophet about God but the word of God through the prophet. God can choose a hero like Moses, a villain like Balaam, or even – this is the point of the story about the talking donkey – an animal. The prophet is not the author of his or her words, merely the vehicle.
The third point is suggested by a comment in Midrash Rabba:
It would have been appropriate for the reprimands [delivered to Israel] to have been said by Balaam and the blessings by Moses. However, if Balaam had spoken the reprimands, the Israelites would have said, “Our enemy is reprimanding us.” And had Moses delivered the blessings, the nations of the world would have said, “One who loves them is blessing them.” Therefore, said the Holy One, Blessed Be He, “Let Moses who loves them reprimand them; and let Balaam who hates them, bless them, so that both the reprimands and the blessings make a clear impression on Israel.”1Deuteronomy Rabba 1:4.
When people say what they are expected to say, their words tend to be discounted. “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Friends praise and bless. Enemies criticise and curse. Hence, to make an impression, to be effective, ultimately to be credible, the order had to be reversed.
It was important that the hard and harsh words – of critique, challenge, warning, and reproof – were said by those whose orientation to the Jewish people was that of love. That is why the prophets of Israel had to love Israel, for it was their task to reprimand the people, and criticism is effective only when delivered out of love.2See on this, two works on prophecy and social criticism by the political philosopher Michael Walzer: Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), and Company of Critics (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
That is why the command to deliver reproof is almost immediately followed by the command to love: “You must reprove your neighbour and not bear sin because of him…. You shall love your neighbour as yourself; I am God” (Lev. 19:17–18).
The corollary also follows. It takes an outsider to deliver praise. As the book of Proverbs puts it: “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips” (Prov. 27:2).
The fourth point has to do with the promise made by God to Abraham at the very outset of the Jewish story:
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.3Gen. 12:2–3. See also Gen. 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14.
To be sure, Abraham was indeed blessed, by Melchizedek king of Shalem (Gen. 14:18). But when, thereafter, do we hear of the Israelites being blessed by others? That is what makes Balaam’s blessings so important. They are the fulfilment of that earlier divine promise. As if to emphasise this, Balaam makes the point no less than three times, once in each of his three speeches of blessing:
Balak brought me from Aram, the king of Moab from the eastern mountains. “Come,” he said, “curse Jacob for me; come, denounce Israel.” How can I curse those whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce those whom the Lord has not denounced? (Num. 23:7–8)
God is not human, that He should lie, not a human being, that He should change his mind. Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise and not fulfil? I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I cannot change it. (Num. 23:19–20)
May those who bless you be blessed, and those who curse you be cursed! (Num. 24:9)
There is a further point, by far the most tantalising. As we read the book of Numbers we read, in seemingly endless variations, a story of the fickleness, ingratitude, and immaturity of the Israelites in the desert. Led by God, protected, nourished, and sustained by Him, all they seem able to do is to complain. Where is their thanksgiving, their faithfulness, their acknowledgement? Why did God choose this people?
Even when Moses prays on their behalf, he does not invoke their merits. He speaks of God’s promise to the patriarchs. He reminds God of the potential desecration of His name in the eyes of the nations if His people perish. He also appeals simply to God’s compassion and forgiveness. From the beginning of Exodus to the end of Numbers, not a word is spoken in praise of the Israelites – except by Balaam. Nor are these faint praises:
No wrongdoing is seen in Jacob, no vice observed in Israel. The Lord their God is with them; the shout of the King is among them. (Num. 23:21)
How beautiful are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel. Like valleys they spread out, like gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters. (24:5–6)
I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a sceptre will rise out of Israel. (24:17)
Who said these words? Ostensibly Balaam. But we know he is only speaking the words God put in his mouth. Might this whole passage not be God’s oblique way of expressing His love for the people He has taken as His own? Might God not have placed in the mouth of Balaam precisely what He would like to say to them Himself but cannot do so, for they are not yet ready for such words, as immediately becomes apparent when the people, having been saved from Balaam’s curses, then start committing adultery and idolatry with the women of Moab and Midian?
Might the whole Balaam/Moses dialectic – Moses reprimanding the people, Balaam singing their praises – represent the duality within the mind of God, between Hashem and Elokim, love and justice, the love God feels for this people yet the justice He demands that they live up to if they are to be His witnesses to the world?
Is this not precisely the divine pathos, that more than Israel loves God, God loves Israel? Surely this is the underlying theme of most of the prophetic literature – what A. J. Heschel called the “divine pathos.”4See A. J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper and Row), 1962.
Might not the entire Balaam episode be God’s way of comforting a people who have been condemned to a forty-year wait in the wilderness? Who have just lost two of their three greatest leaders, Miriam and Aaron? Who are about to enter the home He has been keeping for them since He promised it centuries earlier to Abraham? Might Balaam, who is speaking God’s words, not be God’s mouthpiece obliquely delivering the praise the Israelites have not yet earned but which God wants recorded for posterity?
Might this not be the explanation for the otherwise altogether remarkable fact that more than any other national literature, the Hebrew Bible records Israel’s failings, its shortcomings, its sins, its faults? It is a literature of unparalleled self-criticism. Somehow, somewhere, the people must be assured that they are loved not just for their ancestors but for themselves. Without it we would be left altogether without an explanation for the love of God for this people with whom He is so often angry but for whom He never ceases to care.
Balaam is God’s messenger delivering a love letter to His people in such a way as to leave no doubt that the message came directly from God – since there is nothing in Balaam’s character and conduct that would explain it in any other way. Balaam is, if one can say such a thing, God’s way of fulfilling Proverbs’ principle: “Let someone else praise Your people, and not Your own mouth; a stranger, and not Your own lips.”
Balaam is the most unlikely messenger but the one who delivers the most beautiful of messages.