“How Lovely Are Your Tents, O Jacob” – Balaam’s Praise of Israelite Women

The text implies that the first two messages were received via omen, whereas YHWH’s spirit communicates directly with Balaam in the third:

^{במדבר כד:א} וַיַּרְא בִּלְעָם כִּי טוֹב בְּעֵינֵי יְ־הוָה לְבָרֵךְ אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל וְלֹא הָלַךְ כְּפַעַם בְּפַעַם לִקְרַאת נְחָשִׁים וַיָּשֶׁת אֶל הַמִּדְבָּר פָּנָיו. ^כד:ב וַיִּשָּׂא בִלְעָם אֶת עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל שֹׁכֵן לִשְׁבָטָיו וַתְּהִי עָלָיו רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים.

^{Num 24:1} Now Balaam, seeing that it pleased YHWH to bless Israel, did not, as on previous occasions, go in search of omens, but turned his face toward the wilderness. ^24:2 As Balaam looked up and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the spirit of God came upon him.

The translation of Numbers 24:5–7a is mine. All other biblical translations follow the NJPS, with some modifications.

See, e.g., Timothy R. Ashley, The Book of Numbers, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 489; Keil and Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament (ad loc.).

The Talmud states:

א"ר יוחנן מברכתו של אותו רשע אתה למד מה היה בלבו ביקש לומר שלא יהו להם בתי כנסיות ובתי מדרשות (במדבר כד, ה) מה טובו אהליך יעקב לא תשרה שכינה עליהם ומשכנותיך ישראל.

Rabbi Yohanan said: “From the blessing of that wicked man, you learn what he had in his heart to say. He wanted to say that they should have no synagogues or study houses [and thus it was reversed to]: ‘How lovely are your tents, O Jacob.’ [He wished to say] that the divine presence should not reside among them, [and thus it was reversed to]: ‘Your dwelling-places, O Israel.’”

In a variation on this theme, R. Avraham Saba (d. 1508) connects the tents to Israel’s Temples (Tzror HaMor, ad loc.):

הנה בזאת הברכה בישר לישראל בבנין בתי מקדשים.

With this blessing, he announced to Israel the building of the two Temples.

Rashi is actually re-applying a midrash that was originally glossing v. 2. The reading is brought to explain the source for the Mishnah’s requirement that, when houses share a courtyard, their windows should not be built facing each other (b. Bava Batra 60a):

מְנָהָנֵי מִילֵּי אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן דְּאָמַר קְרָא וַיִּשָּׂא בִלְעָם אֶת עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל שֹׁכֵן לִשְׁבָטָיו מָה רָאָה רָאָה שֶׁאֵין פִּתְחֵי אׇהֳלֵיהֶם מְכֻוּוֹנִין זֶה לְזֶה אָמַר רְאוּיִן הַלָּלוּ שֶׁתִּשְׁרֶה עֲלֵיהֶם שְׁכִינָה.

From where do we get this [rule]? Rabbi Yohanan said: “For the verse states (Num 24:2): ‘Balaam lifted his eyes and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe.’ What did he see? He saw that the openings of their tents were not facing each other. He said: ‘These are worthy to have the divine presence dwelling among them.’”

See also Mo’ed Katan 15b and K’rithoth 8b. Yet another verse is understood this way in b. Mo’ed Qat. 9a:

דְּתָנֵי תַּחְלִיפָא: ״בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי שִׁלַּח אֶת הָעָם וַיְבָרְכוּ אֶת הַמֶּלֶךְ וַיֵּלְכוּ לְאׇהֳלֵיהֶם שְׂמֵחִים וְטוֹבֵי לֵב עַל כׇּל הַטּוֹבָה אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה ה׳ לְדָוִד עַבְדּוֹ וּלְיִשְׂרָאֵל עַמּוֹ״. ״לְאׇהֳלֵיהֶם״ — שֶׁהָלְכוּ וּמָצְאוּ נָשֵׁיהֶם בְּטָהֳרָה, ״שְׂמֵחִים״ — שֶׁנֶּהֱנוּ מִזִּיו הַשְּׁכִינָה, ״וְטוֹבֵי לֵב״ — שֶׁכׇּל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד נִתְעַבְּרָה אִשְׁתּוֹ בְּבֵן זָכָר.

For R. Tahlifa taught: [It is written], “On the eighth day he sent the people away and they blessed the king and went unto their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the Lord had shown unto David His Servant and to Israel His people.” “To their tents,” that is, they went [home] and found their wives in [a state] of purity [to receive their husbands]; “joyful,” that is, that they had enjoyed the radiance of the Shechinah; “and glad of heart,” that is, each man's wife conceived and bore him a male child.

Many biblical euphemisms are based on the conception of the female body as something that is owned—a plot of land or item that is not publicly available, but rather is the possession or responsibility of a specific (male) person or persons. Although it is scarcely possible to make historical assertions about what an Israelite male in any given period might have actually owned, indications are that a man’s cloak and tent would have been regarded as private possessions. Bounded agricultural spaces are also described as existing under the control of specific individuals in biblical texts such as Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kgs 21) or Joakim’s garden (Sus 1). Cisterns, wells, and fountains are frequently ascribed to an individual or group controlling a water source, and may be incorporated in an idealized catalogue of possessions: “each one of you will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree, and drink water from his own cistern” (Isa 36:16 and 2 Kgs 18:31).

Gale A. Yee, Poor Banished Children of Eve: Women as Evil in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); Holly Morse, “‘Judgement Was Executed Upon Her, and She Became a Byword Among Women’ (Ezek. 23.10): Divine Revenge Porn, Slut-shaming, Ethnicity and Exile in Ezekiel 16 and 23,” in Women and Exilic Identity in the Hebrew Bible, ed., Katherine E. Southwood and Martien A. Halvorson- Taylor (Eds.), The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (London: T&T Clark, 2018), 129–154 [= ch. 8].

In the wake of the destruction of Judah, Ezekiel attempts to provide a theological explanation for Judah’s military disaster. Denying that Judah’s defeat should be credited to the superior power of Babylonian forces and deities, Ezekiel condemns Judah’s reliance upon Egypt, which it caricatures as Oholibah whoring with the enemy (vv. 19–21). It also posits an even more overt and scandalous form of adultery on the part of Jerusalem: foreign worship occurs in her temple. Ezekiel 8 details a vision of rampant idolatry practiced within the Temple precincts: rites involving animals, Babylonian fertility traditions, and sun worship.

Gale A. Yee, Poor Banished Children of Eve: Women as Evil in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).

Julie Galambush, Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City as Yahweh’s Wife (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992). This example of the marriage metaphor in the Hebrew Bible draws on the commonplace Ancient Near Eastern personification of female cities married to the local god.

Violent seizure and desecration of the temple by foreign powers with their deities is thus considered a form of rape.

See Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 7c (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1977), 488.

See also בְּאֵר in Proverbs 23:27.

The female body was thought to house the growing fetus but not play a part in its conception. See Gail Susan Labovitz, Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 131.

Tikvah Frymer-Kensky, “The Planting of Man: A Study in Biblical Imagery,” in Love and Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, ed. John M. Marks and Robert M. Good (Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987), 131.

For a discussion of euphemisms based on the cultivation of arable land, such as a garden, orchard, or vineyard, see Pope, Song of Songs, 323–326.

Note the similar construction in the water metaphors in Proverbs 5:15–18, which encourages men to limit their sexual activity to their own wives: שְׁתֵה־מַיִם מִבּוֹרֶךָ “drink water from your cistern,” and בְּאֵרֶךָ “your well,” (v. 15).

On the development of the Balaam traditions, see David Frankel, “The Prehistory of the Balaam Story,” TheTorah.com (2015); and Alexander Rofé, “Balaam the Seer Is Recast as a Villain,” TheTorah.com (2019).

Editor’s note: For some discussion of the problems inherent in the composite story and how the text tries to solve it, see Itamar Kislev, “How Ancient Scribes Tried to Make Sense of the Composite Story of Baal Peor,” TheTorah.com (2014).

“The phrase should be accordingly rendered ‘through the genitals’”. See Jacob Milgrom, The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), 215.