by Rabbi Avi Billet
There is a very simple question that challenges the premise of Parshas Balak.
Why is Balak getting involved in a fight that doesn’t concern him?
We understand Bilaam. He is wired a different way. In many ways he is consumed by hatred for Bnei Yisrael. He demonstrates over and over that all he wants to do is curse the Bnei Yisrael, even though God told him he can’t. We can also understand him because he is a mercenary. He’ll go anywhere for money. And he’s a rabid anti-Semite.
But Balak is the king of Moav. Moshe is going to tell us in Devarim 2:9 that he had been told אל תצר את מואב – essentially, leave Moav alone. As members of the family – remember that they are descendants of Lot, Avraham’s nephew, they were untouchables. Even with the incest that brought about the existence of Moav, the Torah nonetheless tells us that the Bnei Yisrael were to leave Moav alone!
Rashi, Targum Yonatan and others note that Balak may have been the king of Moav, but he was a Midianite. This can help explain why he is going about this personally, and not as much as the king of Moav. In Balak’s view, it is Midian and Yisrael that have a conflict.
We are introduced to Balak with the word וירא בלק בן ציפור..., and Balak son of Tzipor “saw.”
Kli Yakar asks, “What did he see? The battles against Emori were relatively quick and one-sided. But if you weren’t there you don’t see it. [At best] You HEAR about it!” Think about how Parshas Yisro begins. וישמע יתרו כהן מדין… (“Yisro, priest of Midyan ‘heard’… all that God had done”) – he hadn’t been there, but he heard about it all! And here we see Balak SEEING what Yisrael did to Emori?!
Kli Yakar notes that it doesn’t say that he saw what עם ישראל did or what בני ישראל (the nation or the children of Israel) did. It says he saw what YISRAEL did. Kli Yakar suggests that to actually “see it,” Balak must have read this in a book – as all kings of that time had their own private chronicles. And if he read it in a book, it must refer to something that happened in history, not in current events. Remember that when Yaakov gives Shechem to Yosef, he says he is doing so because he took it from the Emori – אשר לקחתי מיד האמרי בחרבי ובקשתי. [There happens to be a lengthy passage in Yalkut Shimoni on Vayishlach which describes an incredible battle which took place after Shimon and Levi destroyed the male population of Shechem. This could ostensibly be referencing a battle which actually took place.]
Balak extrapolated that if as a relatively small family and band of people they were able to wreak such havoc and cause so much devastation, imagine what this huge horde could achieve against his nation.
This does lose sight of the place Moav has in the annals of the people (distant cousins), and perhaps it’s part and parcel with living in that time. After all, when we met Yisro in Parshas Yisro there is an approach that when he came after hearing of the great miracles, he may have thought that he and Midian were the next in line to be attacked by Israel, despite the gratitude Moshe may have had for the time he spent in Midian!
In fact, this may be a reason for the otherwise inexplicable reason for Midian getting involved at all in this conflict now! Moav brings Midian into the fight, when it is Moav who sees themselves as vulnerable! Consider 22:4: וַיֹּאמֶר מוֹאָב אֶל-זִקְנֵי מִדְיָן, עַתָּה יְלַחֲכוּ הַקָּהָל אֶת-כָּל-סְבִיבֹתֵינוּ, כִּלְחֹךְ הַשּׁוֹר, אֵת יֶרֶק הַשָּׂדֶה; וּבָלָק בֶּן-צִפּוֹר מֶלֶךְ לְמוֹאָב, בָּעֵת הַהִוא. “And Moav said unto the elders of Midian: 'Now will this multitude lick up all that is round about us, as the ox licks up the grass of the field.'--And Balak the son of Zippor was king of Moav at that time.”
Kli Yakar says that what’s really going on here is the revisiting of an ancient feud, that which began around the time of the sale of Yosef.
Who took Yosef out of the pit and sold him? According to the Torah’s text it was “Midianim.” See Bereshis 37:28 - וַיַּֽעַבְרוּ֩ אֲנָשִׁ֨ים מִדְיָנִ֜ים סֹֽחֲרִ֗ים וַֽיִּמְשְׁכוּ֙ וַיַּֽעֲל֤וּ אֶת־יוֹסֵף֙ מִן־הַבּ֔וֹר וַיִּמְכְּר֧וּ אֶת־יוֹסֵ֛ף לַיִּשְׁמְעֵאלִ֖ים בְּעֶשְׂרִ֣ים כָּ֑סֶף וַיָּבִ֥יאוּ אֶת־יוֹסֵ֖ף מִצְרָֽיְמָה:
Midianites sold him to Ishmaelites who brought him to Egypt. Once there, Yosef was rising in the ranks of servitude, head of the household of one of the officers of the king. And yet he had a downfall that sent him to prison. And that downfall which stripped him of his position and put him in prison? An accusation of a liaison between himself and Mrs. Potiphar, a.k.a. the “oldest sin in the book” that can destroy a reputation.
After “seeing” what a small horde could do to an entire nation (in the chronicles of Yisrael the man against Emori), perhaps Balak’s chronicles gave him an idea of how to cause the nation of Israel’s downfall: forbidden relationships.
The great irony, that even Balak couldn’t foresee, is that once the ruse and effort to destroy Israel is initially successful, someone rises to stop the plague. And who is that person?
Pinchas. Whose efforts to counter the near destruction of the nation at the end of the parsha, when 24,000 people die on account of the plague associated with the sin of immorality, destroyed all hopes of Moavite success.
Why is that significant? Because, as Rashi – who mentions both options as true, while others list both options as possible – points out, Pinchas is a descendant of Putiel (see Rashi Shemos 4:18, 6:25, 18:1 and Bamidbar 31:6), which refers to both (1) Yosef and (2) Yisro, for different reasons.
Kli Yakar quotes from the blessing given to Yaakov (Bereshis 35:11) פְּרֵ֣ה וּרְבֵ֔ה גּ֛וֹי וּקְהַ֥ל גּוֹיִ֖ם יִהְיֶ֣ה מִמֶּ֑ךָּ – noting that the goy and k’hal goyim that Yaakov is promised to have refers to the children of Rachel. Specifically, the k’hal goyim refers to the children of Yosef. When Balak says (Bamidbar 22:4) ילחכו הקהל את כל סביבותינו כלחוך השור – the words kahal and shor refer to Yosef. He is concerned that Yosef’s power will be his nation’s undoing, as payback for how Midianites treated him back in the day. [The word שור appears twice in the blessings/comments Yaakov makes to his sons at the end of his life. Once it is in the context of the blessing to Yosef (though it is pronounced there “shur”). And once it is in the comments to Shimon and Levi, who are generally deemed most responsible among the brothers for the sale of Yosef. It is possible Yaakov is referring to that in talking about what they did to a shor. (See Rashi Bereshis 49:6, where he also references that Moshe refers to Yosef as shor in Devarim 33:17)]
Midianite involvement, though odd – as they are not exactly in the line of sight in terms of the land Israel is looking to take, and they are also distant cousins to Israel as Midian was one of the sons of Keturah – can yet be pinned on a feeling Midian may have had for having been “rejected” by Avraham, sent off to the east.
How Midian chose to deal with that difficult time is demonstrated in Midian’s history versus the Bnei Yisrael. But Kli Yakar says that Pinchas is exclusively the one who rises to stop the plague because he is the scion of the family who is in the greatest position to singlehandedly bring this conflict to a resolution.
If we explore the possibility Rashi raises that Putiel on the one hand refers to Yisro, and that Putiel on the other hand refers to Yosef, we see that within this single individual Pinchas, the conflict of Yosef and Midian comes to its own resolution, because he follows in the footsteps of the man who rejected Midian for monotheism, as well as the man who rejected the wife of Potiphar, to stand tall for his morals, even in the face of a determined woman who offered herself in every way, whose goal was to bring him down and destroy his place in the World to Come for the price of her own satisfaction.
Balak saw this history. Instead of aiming to come to terms with what happened in the past – that Emori was defeated by Israel, that Midian’s involvement with Yosef only sowed seeds of animus, that Yosef was imprisoned – he failed to see that Yosef’s imprisonment was not because of guilt but just a false accusation, and that Yisro had rejected Midian’s ways to embrace Israel. Balak felt he could use their history as a way avenging the past and defeating Yisrael.
Those who died in the plague (mostly of the tribe of Shimon) did not have the strength of Yisro or Yosef behind them. But Pinchas, who had the blood of Yisro and Yosef coursing through his veins, had what it took to confront evil and destroy it, to stop the plague and save Bnei Yisrael.
What Balak “saw” is also what he failed to see. He could get some Israelites to fall. But just ONE MAN could stop the plague. Balak’s efforts to destroy Israel resulted in Israel destroying Midian for the time being (see the war with Midian in Bamibar 31:7-20 plus the aftermath). They won’t resurface until well into the book of Shoftim.
This is the legacy of Pinchas, scion of Yosef and Yisro, who singlehandedly defeated the aims of Balak, unofficial representative of Midian, current king of Moav, who can’t move on from past defeats in history, to accept that some battles are not meant to be waged. As Bilaam said: “God shall consume the nations which are his adversaries.” (24:8) That is the guarantee Balak should have paid attention to, as should Israel’s enemies in our time.
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