88 | JULY 14 • 2022 

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

continued from page 86

