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and enticed the Israelites to be unfaith-
ful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so
that a plague struck the Lord’s people”
(Num. 31:16).
In other words, having gone through
what should surely have been a trans-
formative experience of finding curses
turned to blessings in his mouth, Bilaam
remained implacably opposed to the
people he had blessed, and seemingly
to the God who put the words into his
mouth, and was still capable of devising
a plot to injure the Israelites.
It did not change the Israelites, who
remained vulnerable to the Moabites,
Midianites, and the enticements of sex,
food and foreign gods. It did not change
Moses, who left it to Pinchas to take
the decisive act that stopped the plague
and was soon thereafter told that Joshua
would succeed him as leader.

THE ESSENCE OF THE PARSHAH
So, if it did not change the Moabites,
Midianites, Israelites, Bilaam or Moses,
what was the point of the episode?
What role did it play in the story of
our people? For it does play a significant
role. In Deuteronomy, Moses reminds
the people that the Moabites “did not
come to meet you with bread and water
on your way when you came out of
Egypt, and they hired Bilaam son of
Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim
to pronounce a curse on you. However,
the Lord your God would not listen to
Bilaam but turned the curse into a bless-
ing for you, because the Lord your God
loves you” (Deut. 23:4-5).
Joshua, when he came to renew the
covenant after the conquest of the land,
gave an abridged summary of Jewish
history, singling out this event for atten-
tion: “When Balak son of Zippor, the
king of Moab, prepared to fight against
Israel, he sent for Bilaam son of Beor
to put a curse on you. But I would not
listen to Bilaam, so he blessed you again
and again, and I delivered you out of his
hand.” (Josh. 24:9-10).
The prophet Micah, younger contem-
porary of Isaiah, said in the name of
God, “My people, remember what Balak
king of Moab plotted and what Bilaam
son of Beor answered,” just before he
delivers his famous summary of the reli-

gious life: “He has shown you, O man,
what is good and what the Lord requires
of you: to act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God”
(Mic. 6:5, 8).
At the culmination of the reforms
instituted by Ezra and Nehemiah after
the Babylonian exile, Nehemiah had the
Torah read to the people, reminding
them that an Ammonite or Moabite may
not enter “the assembly of the Lord”
because “they did not meet the Israelites
with food and water but had hired
Bilaam to call a curse down on them.
Our God, however, turned the curse into
a blessing” (Neh. 13:2).
Why the resonance of an event that
seemingly had no impact on any of the
parties involved, made no difference
to what happened thereafter and yet
was deemed to be so important that it
occupied a central place in the telling of
Israel’s story by Moses, Joshua, Micah
and Nehemiah?
The answer is fundamental. We search
in vain for an explanation of why God
should have made a covenant with a
people who repeatedly proved to be
ungrateful, disobedient and faithless. God
Himself threatened twice to destroy the
people, after the Golden Calf and the epi-
sode of the spies. Toward the end of our
parshah, He sent a plague against them.
There were other religious peoples
in the ancient world. The Torah calls
Malkizedek, Abraham’s contemporary,
“a priest of God most high.” (Gen.
14:18). Yitro, Moses’ father-in-law, was a
Midianite priest who gave his son-in-law
sound advice as to how to lead.
In the book of Jonah, during the
storm, while Jonah the Hebrew prophet
was sleeping, the gentile sailors were
praying. When the prophet arrived at
Nineveh and delivered his warning,
immediately the people repented, some-
thing that happened rarely in Judah/
Israel. Malachi, last of the prophets, says:
“From where the sun rises to where
it sets, My name is honored among the
nations, and everywhere incense and
pure oblation are offered to My name;
for My name is honored among the
nations — said the Lord of Hosts — but
you profane it …” (Mal. 1:11-12)
Why then choose Israel? The answer

is love. Virtually all the prophets said
so. God loves Israel. He loved Abraham.
He loves Abraham’s children. He is often
exasperated by their conduct, but He
cannot relinquish that love. He explains
this to the prophet Hosea. Go and marry
a woman who is unfaithful, He says. She
will break your heart, but you will still
love her, and take her back (Hos. 1-3).
Where, though, in the Torah does
God express this love? In the blessings of
Bilaam. That is where He gives voice to
His feelings for this people. “I see them
from the mountain tops, gaze on them
from the heights: This is a people that
dwells apart, not reckoned among the
nations.”
“Lo, a people that rises like a lion,
leaps up like the king of beasts.” “How
good are your tents, O Jacob, Your
dwellings, O Israel!” These famous
words are not Bilaam’s. They are
God’s — the most eloquent expression
of His love for this small, otherwise
undistinguished people.
Bilaam, the pagan prophet, is the most
unlikely vehicle for God’s blessings. But
that is God’s way. He chose an aged,
infertile couple to be the grandparents of
the Jewish people. He chose a man who
couldn’t speak to be the mouthpiece of
his word. He chose Bilaam, who hated
Israel, to be the messenger of His love.
Moses says explicitly: “The Lord your
God would not listen to Bilaam but
turned the curse into a blessing for you,
because the Lord your God loves you.”
That is what the story is about:
not Balak, or Bilaam, or Moab, or
Midian, or what happened next. It is
about God’s love for a people, their
strength, resilience, their willingness
to be different, their family life (tents,
dwelling places) and their ability to
outlive empires.
The Rambam explains that all God’s
acts have a moral message for us. I
believe that God is teaching us that love
can turn curses into blessings. It is the
only force capable of defeating hate.
Love heals the wounds of the world.

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have

been made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This

essay was written in 2019.

SPIRIT A WORD OF TORAH

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