Balak (parashah)

Frymer-Kensky concluded that Deuteronomy stresses the moral lesson: Very simply, the guilty perished, and those who were alive to hear Moses were innocent survivors who could avoid destruction by staying fast to God.

Frymer-Kensky called Ezekiel's memory the most catastrophic: Because the Israelites rebelled in the Baal-Peor incident, God vowed that they would ultimately lose the Land that they had not yet even entered.

[54] Psalm 106:28–31 reports that the Israelites attached themselves to Baal Peor and ate sacrifices offered to the dead, provoking God's anger and a plague.

The parashah is discussed in these rabbinic sources from the era of the Mishnah and the Talmud:[56] A baraita taught that Moses wrote the Torah, the portion of Balaam, and the book of Job.

So in an application of the principle of Deuteronomy 32:4, "The Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are Justice," God raised up kings, sages, and prophets for both Israel and nonbelievers alike.

[58] Reading Deuteronomy 2:9, "And the Lord spoke to me, 'Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle,'" Ulla argued that it certainly could not have entered the mind of Moses to wage war without God's authorization.

[61] Similarly, the Mishnah taught that anyone who has an evil eye, a haughty spirit, and an over-ambitious soul is a disciple of Balaam the wicked and is destined for Gehinnom and descent into the pit of destruction.

The Mishnah taught that Psalm 55:24 speaks of the disciples of Balaam when it says, "You, o God, will bring them down to the nethermost pit; men of blood and deceit shall not live out half their days.

Rav Papa observed that this is an application of the popular saying that she who descended from princes and governors played the harlot with laborers (showing that she had no conception of the dignity of her beginnings).

"[64] A Tanna taught in the name of Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar that intense love and hate can cause one to disregard the perquisites of one's social position.

[65] Reading Numbers 22:23, a midrash remarked on the irony that the villain Balaam was going to curse an entire nation that had not sinned against him, yet he had to smite his donkey to prevent it from going into a field.

[66] The Mishnah taught that the mouth of the donkey that miraculously spoke to Balaam in Numbers 22:28–30 was one of ten things that God created on the eve of the first Sabbath at twilight.

"[70] The Gemara interpreted the words "knowing the mind of the most High" in Numbers 24:16 to mean that Balaam knew how to tell the exact moment when God was angry.

[91] The Gemara related what took place after, as Numbers 25:5 reports, "Moses said to the judges of Israel: ‘Slay everyone his men who have joined themselves to the Baal of Peor.’" The tribe of Simeon went to Zimri complaining that capital punishment was being meted out while he sat silently.

At that moment, Moses forgot the law governing intimacy with an idolatrous woman, and all the people burst into tears, as Numbers 25:6 reports when it says, "they were weeping at the door of the tent of meeting.

Alternatively, Samuel said that Phinehas saw that (in the words of Proverbs 21:30) "There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord," which he interpreted to mean that whenever the Divine Name is being profaned, one may relax the general principle that one must defer to one's teacher—the giver of wisdom—and go ahead to make a legal decision in the presence of one's teacher.

Rabbi Judah bar Pazzi taught that the sages wanted to excommunicate Phinehas, but the Holy Spirit rested upon him and stated the words of Numbers 25:13, "And it shall be to him, and to his descendants after him, the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God, and made atonement for the people of Israel.

[94] The interpreters of Scripture by symbol taught that the deeds of Phinehas explained why Deuteronomy 18:3 directed that the priests were to receive the foreleg, cheeks, and stomach of sacrifices.

The Gemara then provided an alternative explanation: Exodus 6:25 could mean that Phinehas descended from Joseph, who conquered (pitpeit) his passions (resisting Potiphar's wife, as reported in Genesis 39).

[102] In the word "even" (גַּם‎, gam) in Numbers 22:33 (implying that the angel would also have killed Balaam), Abraham ibn Ezra found evidence for the proposition that the donkey died after she spoke.

[108] Following the Mishnah[96] (see “In classical rabbinic interpretation” above), Maimonides acknowledged that based on Phinehas's slaying of Zimri, a zealot would be considered praiseworthy to strike a man who has sexual relations with a gentile woman in public, that is, in the presence of ten or more Jews.

[109] Baḥya ibn Paquda taught that those who trust that God will favor them without performing good deeds are like those of whom the Talmud says that they act like Zimri and expect the reward of Pinchas.

Alter pointed out that in Hebrew, the first word of the story in Numbers 22:2 is the verb "to see" (וַיַּרְא‎), which then becomes (with some synonyms) the main Leitwort in the tale about the nature of prophecy or vision.

Alter noted that all this "hullabaloo of visionary practice" stands in ironic contrast to Balaam's blindness to the angel his donkey could plainly see, until in Numbers 22:31, God chose to "unveil his eyes."

[128] Similarly, Frymer-Kensky wrote that the cataclysm began with a dinner invitation from the Moabite women, who perhaps wanted to be friendly with the people whom Balaam had tried, but failed, to curse.

Frymer-Kensky suggested that "Moabite women" appear in Numbers 25 as an artistic device to create a symmetrical antithesis to the positive image of Ruth.

Since the nature of Phinehas's act, killing with his own hands, left his heart filled with intense emotional unrest, God provided a means to soothe him so that he could cope with his situation and find peace and tranquility.

The Gemara read the closing admonition of the haftarah, ""to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God," as one of several distillations of the principles underlying the Torah.

[136] The Passover Haggadah, in the concluding nirtzah section of the Seder, quotes the words "who can count them" from Numbers 23:10 to invoke blessing on the Jewish people.

[137] Balaam's blessing of Israel in Numbers 24:5 constitutes the first line of the Ma Tovu prayer often said upon entering a synagogue or at the beginning of morning services.