Open Closed Open – Speech, Intention and Action

By Yaakov Mascetti*

When I was recently asked to write something on the weekly Torah portion (parashah) of Balak, the moment came when I had to face one of the most difficult sections in the Scriptures from the point of view of the literary structure and the motifs tackled in it. The story is structured, that is, in an extremely linear way, but which also conveys a certain lack of linearity and logic development. Traditionally, the story of how the king of Moab, Balak, sent for the gentile prophet Balaam, asking him to curse the people of Israel, for the very simple reason he fears their might in light of what they did to the Amorites, has been interpreted as one of the blatant examples of visceral hatred for the neo-redeemed Jews. Following a series of failed attempts on the part of Balak to have Balaam curse Israel, the parashah ends with the hideous and incomprehensible fall of the Israelites, who are tempted by the Midianite women and thus lapse both sexually and religiously into an idolatrous cult (Baal Peor). Is there a direct correlation between the attempts to curse the Israelites (all of which fall), and their actual fall? Or are the two events separate? The first case scenario is problematic because it implies that Balaam’s blessings are really curses, and that they are effective despite the fact that God himself is the one who blesses the Israelites. The second scenario makes the fall of the Israelites appear to the reader as an illogical turn of events, unrelated to all that happens in the parashah and thus hard to explain. In what follows I wish to argue that the parashah wishes to create and convey a clear distinction between words, conceived as the signs of thoughts and expressions of intention, and the inward dimension of the individual which they come to manifest. A second separation is established, furthermore, between the performative use of words (curses and blessings) and their effects. Both of these motifs shed light upon and derive from the epistemological characteristics exemplified by Balak, where there is an uninterrupted relationship between the material sphere (interpreted as a plethora of signs of something), and the hidden meaning it conveys – the Torah wishes, in this sense, to correct the erroneous mindset of the king of Moab, and to create a distinction or separation between the perceived signs and their meaning.

Faced with the vastness and might of the Israelites camped near the border with his kingdom, Balak expresses his ill-hidden fear:

Balak son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. Moab was alarmed because that people was so numerous. Moab dreaded the Israelites, and Moab said to the elders of Midian, “Now this horde will lick clean all that is about us as an ox licks up the grass of the field.” Balak son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at that time, sent messengers to Balaam son of Beor in Pethor, which is by the Euphrates, in the land of his kinsfolk, to invite him, saying, “There is a people that came out of Egypt; it hides the earth from view, and it is settled next to me. Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that he whom you bless is blessed indeed, and he whom you curse is cursed. (Num. 22:2-7)

The massive presence of an alien ethnic group signifies for Balak a threat, the clear intention on the part of that group to attack and, to use his own metaphor, devour all that it finds on its way. Balak’s forma mentis merges the physical sphere with meaning, for there is a direct and literal connection between the perceived reality as a signifier and the hidden meaning as its signified, between the apparent and the essential, between the manifested exterior reality of the expression and its intended meaning / intention. The only solution Balak finds is that of summoning Balaam, a prophet from the Euphrates region (like Abraham), and ask him to curse the Israelites with the power of his words and thus get rid of the threat. Balak in fact sees no difference between the elocution of the curse’s words and their immediate effect, between the verbal signs and their meaning, for, to use his words, “I know that he whom you bless is blessed indeed, and he whom you curse is cursed.” Whatever Balaam says, fashions reality, takes place.

Balaam, who for some incomprehensible reason is labeled in the majority of Jewish interpreters of the Bible as “the evil,” is a prophet born outside the seed of Israel, a man “without a nation” (Sanhedrin 105a), and cannot, in my opinion, be seen to share Balak conception of signification. He is a prophet, and thus must say and do whatever God tells him to say or do.

Spend the night here, and I shall reply to you as the LORD may instruct me.” So the Moabite dignitaries stayed with Balaam (Num. 22:8)

The Divine answer to Balaam’s inquiry is hardly understandable – first God awkwardly asks “what do these people want of you,” as if he knows not what they have come to ask him; second, while he first tells Balaam not to go with “those people” and not to curse the Israelites, for it is indeed blessed, he then allows him to go along with Balak’s emissaries, but then is angered by the fact that he goes with them and blocks his way with an angel. Yet in his prophetic passivity, Balaam explains all this to Balak in one simple sentence:

Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not do anything, big or little, contrary to the command of the LORD my God (22:18)

The Divine message delivered through Balaam’s prophecy creates a separation between that which is said or done, and that with is then done, or between that which is said and the intention behind the verbal expression. In this manner, Balak is quite bluntly faced with the clear-cut separation between that which he wants Balaam to say, and that which he says – the Divine endorsement in prophecy is, in other words, the undermining of an urge for obsessive control over things. God’s word divides between the intention of man and that which he does – it does not join the two.

Isaac Abarbanel famously asked on the matter of the narrative discontinuity presenting God first allowing Balaam to go along with Balak’s emissaries, while then reacting with anger as he blocked Balaam’s way with an angel holding a sword, and formulated his question as follows:

If G-d gave Balaam permission to go, saying to him, “If these men have come to invite you, you may go with them” (Num. 22:20), after he goes how can Scripture say, “But G-d was incensed at his going; so an angel of the Lord placed himself in his way as an adversary” (Num. 22:22); for did he not go by G-d’s leave and at His word?

I wish to argue that this contradictory behavior of God’s is presented by the Bible as part of a pedagogical process aimed to educate Balak, through Balaam’s passive behavior, that Divine utterances cannot be controlled, and that things as we perceive them are not always conveyances of a clear meaning. Whether it is a speaking she-ass, or a prophet blessing rather than cursing as he was asked to, or the presence of a massive and threatening people near your border, things are not to be perceived as direct expressions of a necessary meaning, but as perceivable manifestations of a hidden and incomprehensible Divine decision. The cognitive humility to be learned here allows the individual to understand that he or she cannot understand in the deepest and most essential of ways, the perceived reality he or she lives in – rather, one is encouraged to acknowledge the lack of control one has over reality, and accept that there are things one can only perceive partially. Just as the three blessings, uttered instead of curses, are incomprehensible, so the three times Balaam hits his she-ass are incomprehensible, or the way in which God opens the she-ass’ mouth allowing her to express misunderstanding and pain at her owner’s violence.

To conclude, one cannot but wonder how and why the whole parashah ends with the Israelites and their lapse – the easy answer is to see the direct correlation between the efforts made by Balak and Balaam, and choosing would entail adopting their sinful forma mentis. In truth, what the reader sees in the book of Numbers is a recently redeemed people from centuries of slavery, violently and miraculously thrust out of an extremely material culture which it had gladly adopted, and having a very hard time a God the intentions of whom are hardly understandable, and who cannot be seen or touched. Their fall is the result of a deeply felt need for the immediacy of meaning, for a carnal knowledge of things allegorically represented as the sexual lapse vis-à-vis the Midianite women, and the cult of Baal Peor which Rashi consistently explains as the “opening of the anus and the defecation in from the divinity.” The Israelites fall for their urge to control their future, to hold in their hands the immediacy of Divine intention (ie. the golden calf), and because of their unease with God’s physical absence. And we, as readers, are encouraged to see how in order to understand, we must first fail to understand, and then, as we relinquish to control our reality and its meaning, tackle events in life with humility, pity and empathy for the other’s suffering.

Balaam, Balaam, whose curse turned to blessing and his blessing to love.
Lay sleepless all night and at dawn he dashed off to the hills
to survey the tribes of Israel and deliver his oracle.
But the children of Israel had departed in haste during the night,
light on their feet, free of blessing and curse, and all Balaam could see
was the abandoned camp, tent pegs, bits of rope and campfire embers,
the smell of sheep, the memory of women’s perfume, veils
left behind, a dress ripped by hard thistles, broken day jars,
a bright-colored ribbon and a jackal scrabbling in the garbage, howling
And Balaam went home, as a man returns to his lover’s room
the morning after and finds the room empty, only a crumpled letter,
a white stocking, a comb with hair in it—that is how Balaam longed for
the children of Israel. That Balaam with his oration, man without
a nation,
whose curse turned to blessing and blessing to love
and love to longing and longing to a pain that has no end.
From his window he could still see the pillar of fire
and the pillar of smoke on the horizon,
and the two shall never meet.

— from Yehuda Amichai, “The Bible and You, the Bible and You, and other Midrashim” in Open Closed Open. Trans. by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld (2000)

*Yaakov Mascetti holds a Ph.D. and teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar Ilan University.