By Rebbetzin Lauren Levin
Parshat Balak is intriguing. A neighbouring nation, afraid of war with the Israelites believes they can be vanquished through curses instead. A prophet, carrying the word of God is too obtuse to perceive an angel, rendering a donkey more perceptive to experiencing the Divine than a man of God. And of course, we cannot forget the talking donkey, appearing here a good few thousand years before Disney thought up Shrek.
At the heart of the drama, we are presented with a striking image. The angel that the donkey sees is brandishing its sword. Such a depiction of an angel is unusual. In fact we only see it on two other occasions in the Bible. As such it must be significant to understanding the message that God wanted to give Bilam and the Jewish people.
Angels of destruction are not new to us. An angel of destruction was sent to overturn Sedom, the angel of death came to afflict Pharaoh’s household with the fatal tenth plague, and Jacob wrestled with an angel and sustained injuries from it. Yet is this an angel of destruction? If it is an angel of protection then why is it brandishing a sword?
Scholars over the centuries have attributed great significance to the sword brandishing angel. First and foremost there is a message being conveyed not to Bilam the leader, but to Bilam the individual. It is a message of the centrality of care, compassion and empathy. Bilam represents power where his donkey represents the underdog. As Bilam’s frustration with the donkey increases he exclaims, “if only I had a sword I would have killed you”. He is oblivious that there is a sword right opposite him, and he would have been killed had his donkey not moved. When the actions of the donkey appear to delay his all-important mission, there is no time, thought or flexibility to adjust or absorb the deviation. The angel’s sword thus paralleled Bilam’s threatening rhetoric, “If only I had a sword in my hand…”[1]. It serves as a reminder that ‘unnoticed’ abuse of anyone, is noticed by God.
Then there is a message to Bilam the leader. Bilam has been tasked to outsmart the Jewish people through their own strength, the spoken word. The image presented to him is an angel with a sword, indicating that God will eventually bring about his own death through the sword, his nation’s strength. He was not the first anti-Semite to rely on creative methods to destroy the Jews. The Egyptians sought to drown the Israelite baby boys, following advice from the royal astrologers. The astrologers had foreseen a terrible prediction that the Jewish saviour was about to be born. They could not change what they had read in the stars. But they had also seen that the leader would ultimately be stricken by water. They could utilise this in their favour, by drowning every new born male [2].
King Balak uses the same strategy in recruiting Bilam. The Jewish people cannot be vanquished by the sword, and so he tries to think more creatively of how he may be able to overcome them. He is given counsel that Moses’ advice is in his mouth [3], and resorts to overcome them through curse, the strength of the
[1] Chizkuni
[2] Babylonian Talmud Sota 12a, Rashi.
[3] Rashi