JULY 18 • 2024 | 29
J
N
GOD’S ANSWER
TO HUBRIS
The second example was
Egypt during the early
plagues. Moses and Aaron
turned the water of the Nile
into blood and filled Egypt
with frogs. We then read
that the Egyptian magicians
did likewise to show that
they had the same power. So
concerned were they to show
that they could do what the
Hebrews could do, that they
entirely failed to realize that
they were making things
worse, not better. The real
skill would have been to turn
blood back into water, and
make frogs not appear but
disappear.
We hear the Divine
laughter especially in the
third plague: lice. For the
first time, the magicians tried
and failed to replicate the
effect. Defeated, they turned
to Pharaoh and said, “It is
the finger of God.”
The humor comes when
we remember that for the
Egyptians the symbol of
power was monumental
architecture: pyramids,
temples, palaces and statues
on a massive scale. God
showed them His power by
way of the tiniest of insects,
painful yet almost invisible
to the eye. Again, hubris
became nemesis. When
people think they are big,
God shows them they are
small — and vice versa. It is
those who think themselves
small — supremely so Moses,
the humblest of men — who
are truly great.
This explains the otherwise
curious episode of Bilam’s
talking donkey. This is not
a fanciful tale nor simply a
miracle. It arose because of
the way the people of Moab
and Midian thought of Bilam
and perhaps, by extension,
the way he thought of
himself. Balak the Moabite
king, together with the
leaders of the Midianites,
sent a delegation to Bilam
asking him to curse the
Israelites: “Come now, curse
this people for me, since they
are too mighty for me … for
I know that whom you bless
is blessed, and whom you
curse is cursed.”
This is a pagan under-
standing of the holy man:
the shaman, the magus, the
wonder-worker, the person
with access to supernatural
powers. The Torah’s view is
precisely the opposite. It is
God who blesses and curses,
not human beings. “I will
bless those who bless you
and those who curse you
I will curse,” God said to
Abraham. “They shall place
my name on the children of
Israel, and I will bless them,”
he said about the priests. The
idea that you can hire a holy
man to curse someone essen-
tially presupposes that God
can be bribed.
The narrative is admit-
tedly obscure. God tells
Bilam not to go. Balak sends
a second delegation with a
more tempting offer. This
time God tells Bilam to go
with them but say only what
he instructs him to say. The
next morning Bilam sets
out to go with the Moabites,
but the text now states that
God was “angry” with him
for going. That is when the
episode of the donkey takes
place.
The donkey sees an angel
barring the way. It turns
aside into a field, but Bilam
hits it and forces it back to
the path. The angel is still
barring the way and the don-
key veers into a wall, crush-
ing Bilam’s foot. Bilam hits it
again, but finally it lies down
and refuses to move. That is
when the donkey begins to
speak. Bilam then looks up
and sees the angel, who had
been hitherto invisible to
him.
Why did God first tell
Bilam not to go, then that
he should go, and then
was angry when he went?
Evidently God could read
his mind and knew that
Bilam did really want to
curse the Israelites. We know
this because later, after the
attempt to curse the Israelites
failed, Bilam succeeded in
causing them harm, advising
the Midianites to get their
women to seduce the Israelite
men, thus provoking the
anger of God (Num. 31:16).
Bilam was no friend of the
Israelites.
But the story of the talking
donkey is another instance of
Divine laughter. Here was a
man reputed to be a maestro
of supernatural forces. People
thought he had the power to
bless or curse whomever he
chose. God, the Torah tells
us, is not like that at all. He
had two messages, one for
the Moabites and Midianites,
another for Bilam himself.
He showed the Moabites
and Midianites that Israel is
not cursed but blessed. The
more you attempt to curse
them the more they will be
blessed and you yourself will
be cursed. That is as true
today as it was then.
There are movements
throughout the world to
curse the state and people of
Israel. The greater the malice
of Israel’s enemies, the stron-
ger Israel becomes, and the
more disasters its enemies
bring upon their own people.
God had a different mes-
sage for Bilam himself,
and it was very blunt. If
you think you can control
God, then, says God, I will
show you that I can turn a
donkey into a prophet and
a prophet into a donkey.
Your animal will see angels
to which you yourself are
blind. Bilam was forced to
admit: “How can I curse
those whom God has not
cursed? How can I denounce
those whom the Lord has not
denounced?”
Hubris always eventually
becomes nemesis. In a world
in which rulers engaged in
endless projects of self-ag-
grandizement, Israel alone
produced a literature in
which they attributed their
successes to God and their
failures to themselves. Far
from making them weak, this
made them extraordinarily
strong.
So, it is with us as indi-
viduals. I have mentioned
before a beloved friend, no
longer alive, about whom it
was said that “he took God
so seriously that he didn’t
need to take himself serious-
ly at all.” Pagan prophets like
Bilam had not yet learned
the lesson we must all one
day learn: that what matters
is not that God does what we
want, but that we do what He
wants. God laughs at those
who think they have godlike
powers. The opposite is true.
The smaller we see ourselves,
the greater we become.
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.