Filed under: Thoughts of the Week
The stories for this second summer week are on prophecy, zealotry, and hope. In Numbers XXII, 2 – XXV, 9, we read of the king of Moab, Balak, who hires a prophet from the River, Bilaam, to curse the children of Israel so that they do not conquer his lands. Bilaam hesitated to accept the position and reminded Balak and this people that he could not say anything the Lord would not allow him to say. There is a comic piece, a good summer’s evening story and play, about the prophet’s female donkey halting on the road, in fear of an angel that only she sees. Bilaam beats her and she responds in words, demanding why he is beating his faithful servant. When the angel allows Bilaam to see him, he reminds the prophet that he will speak for the Lord.
Upon Bilaam’s request, Balak builds altars on the hill-tops overlooking the tribes arranged in their order in the steepes below. Although Balak wants curses, Bilaam praises the children of Israel first as “a people that shall dwell alone” and then as “a lion that lifts himself up and does not lie down again until he eats his prey.” Bilaam contributes a praise that is used to welcome congregants to services – “how goodly are your tents, O Jacob, Thy dwellings, O Israel” in a third poem. A fourth prophecy deals with the geopolitics of the region – that Israel shall conquer Edom, Amalek, the Kenites – related peoples to the Israelites, descendants of other children of the patriarchs. He also includes the foretelling of the conquest of the region by Assyria and by the sea peoples of Cyprus. At this point, Balak fires Bilaam and sends him home.
There are lovely words of praise, of turning the history of the past into a story of future prophecy. The tribes were preparing to displace related peoples and these prophecies were useful to justify the need for land by these children of slaves. The prophet can only speak the words of the Lord, even if he dooms his employer. I see them as comforting stories for a warm summer evening.
But added to the reading of the week is a cautionary tale against intermarriage, relations with foreign women. Balak could not get his prophet to curse the people but his women could attract the men of Israel into their tents and to their religion. The Lord demanded that Moses impale the leaders of the tribes in the face of the sun for this straying from the camp. But when one of the men takes a Midianitish woman into the camp and to his tent, Pinchas, the son of Eleazar, the current high priest, and the grandson of Aaron, took a spear and stabbed the couple with one thrust through their bellies. Moses, who had married a woman from Midian, may have been conflicted by this act of zealotry. Pinchas is featured in the stories for next week and is seen as a hero. Zealotry is praised and the people hearing the story on a summer evening might have learned a cautionary tale about straying too far from their villages.
The prophetic reading in the haftorah ends with some hope, a passage from Micah – VI, 8 - that is used as the motto for our religious community in Willimantic – “it has been told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord expects of you, only to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your Lord.” The middle way between prophecy, divine determinism, and zealotry, human action felt to be divinely determined, is the struggle of trying to be just, merciful, and divine as humanly possible in dealing with others.
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