The Prehistory of the Balaam Story

It is possible to interpret the words “rose up and waged war against Israel” metaphorically. Accordingly, Balak wanted to wage war against Israel and this he why “he sent and invited Balaam son of Beor to curse you.” After he failed to procure the curse, he backed down. This, however, seems forced. The text does not state that Balak wanted to wage war. It states that he did wage war!

 וַיִּשְׁלַח וַיִּקְרָא לְבִלְעָם בֶּן בְּעוֹר לְקַלֵּל אֶתְכֶם וְלֹא אָבִיתִי לִשְׁמֹעַ לְבִלְעָם וַיְבָרֶךְ בָּרוֹךְ אֶתְכֶם

That the seam is still visible is supported by Radak’s (Rabbi David Kimchi ca. 1160-1235) grappling with the term “war”. Radak (Judg 11:25) notes that the claim in Joshua about a war contradicts Jephthah’s claim that Balak never attacked Israel:

אם נלחם נלחם בם… והנה אמר ביהושע ויקם בלק וילח’ בישראל אלא כמו שפי’ שם כי המלחמה היתה ששלח בלעם לקלל אותם

“Did he ever go to war with them?” …Now Joshua said “King Balak rose up and waged war against Israel.” Rather, it means as is explained there, that the war was that he (Balak) sent Balaam to curse them.

Some Greek manuscripts imply שכרו rather than שכר. It is indeed difficult to state שכר in the singular without specifying that the reference is to Balak. The plural form allows for a smoother reading since it allows the subject to be the Ammonites and Moabites mentioned in verse 4. However, the Amonites played no role in the hiring of Balaam. The Masoretic text is thus to be preferred. The plural שכרו reflects an attempt to smooth over the difficult text, which derives from the secondary nature of verse 5b.

For more on the meaning of the Song of the Sea and suggestions about its original context, see Baruch Schwartz’s TABS essay, “The Song at the Sea: What Does it Celebrate?” , and Dov Bear’s TABS essay, “Does God Split the Sea in the Song of the Sea?”

Even if the poems are essential to the narrative they may once have existed on their own

 וַיְהִ֣י בַבֹּ֔קֶר וַיִּקַּ֤ח בָּלָק֙ אֶת־בִּלְעָ֔ם וַֽיַּעֲלֵ֖הוּ בָּמ֣וֹת בָּ֑עַל וַיַּ֥רְא מִשָּׁ֖ם קְצֵ֥ה הָעָֽם

It is striking to note that Balaam has Balak build seven altars upon which to offer sacrifices to the Lord at a place called במות בעל. Might this testify to a stage of Israelite religion in which Baal was an acceptable epithet for the Israelite God? Compare 2 Samuel 5:20.

This line is only in the fourth poem

The fourth poem seems to be particularly ancient. All the other poems mention the tetragramaton (23:8, 21; 24:6), and the second and third mention the exodus from Egypt (23:22; 24:8). In contrast, the fourth poem mentions El, Elyon and Shaddai, but not the tetragramaton and makes no mention of the exodus. As far as the prose narrator’s disregard of the poem’s discourse about the downfall of peoples other than Moab, this can easily be accounted for by the narrator’s central concern with Moab. While he quoted the poem in its entirety, his main concern was with the people of Balak.

The independence of Balaam is also attested in the Deir Alla inscriptions, which were discovered in 1967 about 8 kilometers west of the Jordan and are dated to the ninth to eighth centuries B.C.E. The main character in these inscriptions is Balaam ben Beor. As far as one can tell, he does not interact with any Moabite king.

Though the broad textual context implies that Balak reigned at the time that Moses was leading the Israelites through the wilderness, it is possible that he was originally thought to have reigned later, perhaps some time in the period of the Judges.

Might one even suppose that the earliest Balaam poems imagined him cursing Israel’s enemies at the behest of the Israelite king? We cannot know, but it is intriguing to speculate.

Note that from the very start Balaam refuses to go to Balak without first getting permission from YHWH (22:8, 13). In 22:18 he even speaks of “YHWH my God.” Thus, Balaam is turned into a Prophet of YHWH. It is true that the text sporadically refers to אלהים rather than ה’ (e.g. 22:9—12, 20, 38). Early scholars attempted to discern separate narratives based on this variation. It seems more likely, however, that the variation has more to do with the scribal transmission of the text than with early sources.

 וַיָּ֨גָר מוֹאָ֜ב מִפְּנֵ֥י הָעָ֛ם מְאֹ֖ד כִּ֣י רַב־ה֑וּא וַיָּ֣קָץ מוֹאָ֔ב מִפְּנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל