The theology of the balaam oracles: a pagan diviner and the word of god

sayer."²

It may be added that some of the older scholars tended to

relate the Hebrew city name to the root rtp [Aramaic rwp], "to interpret

(a dream),” and they suggested this city as a center for mantic arts.³

63. On the interpretation of the LXX, cf, the view of Yaure, discussed below,

Larnsa, Peshitta, p. 182. The Palestinian Targum reads, "Pethor, a name

signifying an interpreter of dreams, " Etheridge, Targum of Palestine, II, 418.

³ So Hengstenberg, History of Balaam, p. 364; Robbins, "Balaam,"

p. 351. Keil, however, regarded the equation as "more than doubtful."

Cf., The Pentateuch, III, 165.

155

rOtP; refers to Pitru [Pi-it-ru] of the Assyrian texts, a city located on

the river Sagur, near its junction with the Euphrates.¹ This identification

seems to have been made first by Eberhard Schrader in the 1870's.² Pitru

is mentioned by Shalmaneser III (ca. 859-824 B. C.)³ in the annalistic report

of 853 B. C.⁴ This is the report which concerns the highly significant battle

at Qarqar between Assyria and the Syro-Palestinian coalition (which included

Ahab of Israel).⁵

In this text Shalmaneser III states:

I crossed the Euphrates another time at its flood on rafts (made

buoyant by means) of (inflated) goatskins. In Ina-Ashur-utir-asbat,
¹ Harrison, Introduction, p. 620. Noth says that Pethor "can

scarcely be anything other than Pitru," Numbers, p. 173.

(unpublished master's thesis, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1955),

p. 30. Reference is made to Eberhard Schrader, Die Keilinschriften and das

Alto Testament. Cf. Michael Heilprin, The Historical Poetry of the Ancient

Hebrews (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1879). Consult also, E.

H. Plumptre, "Assyrian and Babylonian Inscriptions in Their Bearing on Old

Testament History. IX. Balaam the Son of Beor, " Expos., 2d series, 1

1881), 445-46.

"Assyria," NBD, pp. 100--106.

full list of the Assyrian eponyms may he found in Edwin R Thiele, The

B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1965), pp. 209-14.

The Westminster Press, 1972), pp. 239--40; Bruce K. Waltke, "History of

Israel" (unpublished class notes, Old Testament 254, Dallas Theological

Seminary, 1967), p. 65.

156

which he people of Hattina call Pitru, on the other side of the

the other side of the Euphrates , . . ¹ [ Emphasis added ]

A second phrase in Numbers 22:5 relative to the home of Balaam

seems to add little to the verse as it is usually translated, "the land of the

sons of his people." This is an old rendering, however, as may be seen

by comparing the Hebrew words vmf-ynb as they were translated in

the LXX gh?j ui[w?n laou? au]tou?. Robbins attempted to explain these words

as "probably added merely to designate Balaam as a native Aramaean, which

renders his blessing of the Israelites more unexpected and wonderful, than

if he had dwelt. farther west, or had been in any way connected with the

Israelites."² It seems somewhat difficult, however, to sustain the force

Tell Ahmar," a site near the Euphrates, about twelve miles south of Car-

chernish. Denis Baly and A. D. Tushingham, Atlas of the Biblical World

(New York: The World Publishing Company, 1971), p. 205; cf. p. 103,

map 16. See also the photograph of the area in WB, I, 226, where the

Assyrian riame Pith: was given in the text quoted above is translated: "to

the god Ashur I gave back I have taken (the city)." Pethor/Pitru is not

located by Yohanan Aharoni and Michael Avi-Yonah, The Macmillan Bible

Atlas (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Collier-Macmillan,

Ltd., 1968), p. 81, map 127.

addition, 'the land of the children of his people, 'should remind us that

Balaam dwelt in Aram not perhaps after the manner of Jacob, but rather was

an Aremeen by birth and descent." "Balaam," p. 365. Sutcliffe also gives

a similar argument: these words "are not otiose, but give additional infor-

mation.” See E. P. Sutcliffe, "A Note on Numbers XXII,” Biblica, XVIII

157

of this argument.¹

with this phrase, so interpreted. Both the Vulgate and the Peshitta read

Nvmf instead of vmf, reading "the land of the children of Ammon." Such

an interpretation only compounds our problem, however, for it leads to a

conflict of ancestry: Ammonite versus Aramaean.

Writing in 1922 E. E. Kellett expressed hope concerning a

new approach in which the word vmf was taken as a proper name:

In Sayce's Hittites, p. 22, the vmf of Nu 22 5 is treated as a

proper name, equivalent to the ^cAmma of the mountains: a city in

the neighborhood of Pethor. I should be glad to know if this identi-

fication commends itself to scholars; to translate vmf, as 'his

people,' seems unsatisfactory.²

One may now cite information given by Albright in 1950 which

he regarded as of "the greatest interest to students of the Mosaic tradition."³

and not to Balaam. Eric Burrows, The Oracles of Jacob and Balaam, "The

Bellarmine Series," III, ed. Edmund F. Sutcliffe (London: Burns Oates &

Washbourne, Ltd., 1938), p. 78, n. 1.

"It is obvious that this translation is a makeshift which does not make

sense, besides being grammatically impossible, for rhnh (with the article;)

cannot he in the construct case. " A. S. Yahuda, "The Name of Balaam's

Homeland, " JBL, LXIV (1945), 547.

² E. E. Kellett, "Some Old Testament Notes and Queries, "

ET, XXXIII (1921-22), 426.

Alphabetic Origins and the Idrimi Statue, " BASOR, CVIII (April, 1950), 15, n.

13.

158

statue of king Idrimi of Alalakh, whose reign Albright dates ca. 1480-1450

B. C.¹ The statue was discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1939 at Tell

Atshanah, near the bend of the Orontes River, east of Antioch.² Albright

observes that Idrimi was king of Alalakh and also reigned over the lands of

Mukishkhe, Ni', and ^cAmau. Concerning this last location, Albright states:

At the last moment I find the obviously correct identification of

^cAmau with the biblical land of ^cMW in Num. 22:5, where the

diviner Balaam . . . is said to come from "PTR on the River in the

land of the children . . . of ^cMW." Since the LXX, going back to

a Hebrew prototype of the fourth century or even earlier, had the

same consonantal text before them, it is quite unnecessary to emend

^cMW to ^cAmmon or (with me in 1915) ^cEden (where Pitru was situated

in the ninth century B. C. ). Since Balaam's contacts with Israel

may safely be dated about 1250 B. C., only about 200 years after

Idrimi, the name of the land in question would be expected to

persist. ^cAmau would then be the region of the Sajur Valley between

Aleppo and Carchemish. This location rounds out the territory of

Idrimi in the happiest way. Needless to say, this discovery is of

the greatest interest to students of the Mosaic tradition.³

heim, ANES, pp. 557-58.

view of 1915 is to be found in his article, "The Home of Balaam," JAOS,

XXXV (1915), 389. It should be noted that Oppenheim normalizes ^cAmau

as Ama'e, but with no explanation, ANES, p. 557. Curiously, Albright

does not mention in his 1950 article that Yahuda in 1945 had identified

vmf of Numbers 22:5 as the proper noun ^cAmu, an Egyptian designation for

Aramaeans. Yahuda gave a number of references to Egyptian literature.

Yahuda, "The Name of Balaam's Homeland," pp. 547-51.

For later notes by Albright on the identification of vmf with

^cAmau, cf. "The Old Testament and the Archaeology of the Ancient East, "

159

Proper place name in Northern Syria, ^cAmau, seems to be quite satisfactory.

it would appear that this word is an example of a rare instance in which the

ancient word was not known to the later Jewish scholars, both in Alexandria

and among the later Massoretes. In both the LXX and the MT the word of

our text was preserved and interpreted, even though the original meaning

was lost. Albright's suggestion has been followed by Moriarty,¹ Wiseman,²

and Beegle.³ It has been accepted by several new Bible translations,⁴ but

ed. H. H. Rowley (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1951), pp. 33--34; Yahweh

(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968), p. 15, n. 38. In

this last work Albright relates Hebrew vmf to Akkadian ^cAmau and Egyptian

^cAmaw; again, with no reference to Yahuda.

¹ Frederick L. Moriarty, "Numbers," The Jerome Bible Commentary,

ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer and Roland E. Murphy (2 vols.,

bound as one; Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice-Hall, Inc. , 1968), I, 95.

² D. J. Wiseman, "Alalakh," Archaeology and Old Testament

Study: Jubilee Volume of the Society for Old Testament Study, 1917-1967,

ed. D. Winton Thomas (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 121-22.

states that "an inscription from the time of Amenophis II (about 1435-1420

B. C,) tells of Pharaoh capturing a Syrian land named 'Amaw. ' The two

fifteenth-century inscriptions confirm that there was a province of Amaw

along the Euphrates, and the ninth-century text locates Pitru within that

area, " Dewey M. Beegle, Moses, The Servant of Yahweh (Grand Rapids:

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1972), pp. 320-21.

⁴ R S. V., "in the land of Amaw; " N. E. B., "in the land of the

Amavites;" S. B. J. "au pays des fits d'Ammav;" J. B., "in the land of the

sons of Amaw.

160

The present writer would also observe that if the events of our

narrative are placed within the framework of the "early" dates for the Exodus

(ca., 145 B. C.) and Conquest (ca. 1405 B. C.), the expectation of the name

persisting for 200 years (until ca. 1250 B. C.), is made unnecessary. In fact,

one may say that the citations in Egyptian, Akkadian, and Hebrew literature

all date from the same century.

Hence, we suggest that the translation of Numbers 22:5, which

relates to the origin of Balaam, read as follows:

So he sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor,

at Pethor, which is near the River [Euphrates],

in the land of the sons of Amau.

Balaam is a North-Syrian from the northern Euphrates valley, near the Haran

of the patriarchal stories.³

of the sons of his people." Noth and his translator seem to be unaware of

Albright's discussion. Noth translates, "the land of his fellow country-

men. " James D. Martin, his translator, adds: "The RSV with no apparent

justification, has 'the land of Amaw'. " Noth, Numbers, p. 173, and note.

² This is suggested by Albright; cf. his quotation on p. 158,

above.

the view expressed in the Talmud [ Sanhedrin 105a ] that Balaam is to be

equated with Laban (!); nor does it lend credence to the view that Balaam

might be a descendant of Laban, as was suggested by Andrew Fuller, Ex-

American Baptist Publication Society, 1845), III, 128-29.

161

Moreover, Balaam's introductory bicola in his first oracle agrees

From Aram, Balak has brought me,

Moab's king front the mountains of the east.

[Num. 23:7a]

The term Aram in this verse is expanded in Deuteronomy 23:5 [Eng. v. 4] to

Aram of the Two Rivers [MyirahEna MraxE], i. e., Mesopotamia. The phrase,

“The mountains of the east" in Numbers 23:7a [ Md,q,-yrer;hame] has been

pressed by Yahuda to mean an explicit reference to a location in Northeast

Syria, as in the Story of Si-Nuhe.¹ However, in both the text of Numbers and

the story of the Egyptian, Si-Nuhe, the term seems best taken as a general

reference to Northeast Syria.²

It may be added that an entirely different approach has been

taken by L. Yaure in an article written in 1960.³ He states that the term

hrvtp should not be read as a place name with a directive ending, but as

two in perfect accord, "where Qedem is on the way to Haran." Yahuda, "The

Name of Balaam's Homeland," pp. 549-50. A translation of the Egyptian

text which describes the travels of an Egyptian official of the mid-twentieth

century B.C. [Middle Kingdom], may be found in ANET, pp. 1 8-22,

² The translator of the Story of Si-Nuhe in ANET, John A. Wilson,

states that Qedem is "Semitic for 'the East' generally. A vague term, either

in the writer’s ignorance of Asiatic geography or intentionally vague for a

area." ANET, p. 19, n. 10.

ber, 1960), 297-314.

162

an Aramaic nomen agentis meaning the interpreter." His reasons include the

of Pethor on the upper Euphrates of some 400 miles is too far for the repeated

trips demanded by the story; (2) the ancient versions understood the term as

a title rather than a city name;¹ (3) the Jerusalem Targum agrees with the

ancient versions;² and (4) the title, "the interpreter" fits the character of

Balaam.

seem to be problems that outweigh them. Yaure seems to be alone among

moderns to argue that "Pethor" is not a location. Indeed, Noth regards this

word as "the only factual information" concerning the origin of Balaam that

we have.³ More important, however, than the charge of being "alone," is the

observation that in presenting his thesis, Yaure has had to dismiss the testimony

of Deuteronomy 23:5 [Eng. v. 4].⁴ Moreover, he in fact dismisses what he
^l He cites the Vulgate and the Peshitta, mentioned above in the

present paper, p. 154. Yaure explains the LXX word phathoura to be a phonetic

transliteration of the Aramaic pathorah, which he takes to be an epithet; ibid.,

p. 311.

his place of residence is in Padan which is Pethor, so called after his name

pathor helmaiia." Here Yaure says the term "Pethor" is explained as an

epithet, ibid., p. 312.

sanctioning, what Yaure regards to be an error. Yaure, "Elymas--Nehe-

lamite—Patheor.” p. 310.

163

So far as our traditional text is concerned, it is evident that

its writer--be he the original author or, more probably, a later reviser—

understood the "pethorah" as a Hebrew locative indicating that Balaam

wars a resident of the city called Pethor.¹

Hence, Yaure rejects internal biblical evidence both from the

primary passage (Num. 22:7) and from latter references (e.g. Deut, 23:5

[Eng. v. 4]). His emending the Hebrew text on the basis of the versions is

precarious procedure on methodological grounds. It would be a better approach

to regard the versional evidence as suspect due to the translators' difficulty

with the place name Pethor which they did not recognize.
Summary

In the light of present evidence we may summarize that Balaam

was from Northern Syria, from a city called Pethor (Pitru), and an area called

Amau. He is thus from the upper Euphrates valley. He is not Israelite, Edom-

ite, Moabite, Ammonite, Musrite, Hittite; but Aramaean.
The Character and Role of Balaam

Introduction

The issue of the character of Balaam is replete with problems

and the views are multifarious. How are we to understand this figure whom
^l Ibid.

164

the character and role of Balaam is not a new question, but has been a matter

of debate for centuries. Hengstenberg surveys the issue by listing a number

of writers in opposing camps. He lists as supporters of the position that

Balaam is to be regarded as a false prophet the following: Philo, Ambrose,

Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoret, and many Roman and Reformed theo-

logians. Conversely, he lists those figures who have regarded Balaam as a

true prophet to include: Tertullian, Jerome, Buddeus, Deyling, and Benzel.²

The difficulty in assessing the role of Balaam in our narrative

is of such massive proportion, that Bishop Butler regarded Balaam with aston-

ishcd incredulity. He writes:

So that the object we have now before us is the most astonishing

in the world: a very wicked man, under a deep sense of God and

religion, persisting still in his wickedness, and preferring the wages

of unrighteousness, even when he had before him a lively view of

death, . . . Good God, what inconsistency, what perplexity is here.³

A more modern expression of the difficulty was uttered by Vriezen. Vriezen
¹ A. B. Davidson, Old Testament Prophet , ed. J. A Paterson

(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1903), p. 10; cited by William Deller Jaggers,

"The Nature of the Balaam Oracles" (unpublished master's thesis, Southern

Baptist Theological Seminary, 1955), p. 35.

165

any real shape to his person."¹

Balaam has been called a prophet of Baal,² a clairvoyant,³

a man of “deep insight into the mysteries of life,"⁴ an ecstatic,⁵ and even

an early example of a "dervish."⁶ Our problem becomes more complex when
¹ Th. C. Vriezen, The Religion of Ancient Israel, trans. by

Hubert Hoskins (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1967), pp. 208-209.

by J. A. Baker, "The Old Testament Library," ed. G. Ernest Wright, et al.

(2 vols,; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961, 1967), I, 296. This

was also the opinion of von Orelli: "Balaam is rather an example of a clair-

voyant. . . . Here by outward incitements the physico-mental torpor is in-

duced, which makes a man the channel of words, whose meaning he himself

does not know." C. von Orelli, Old Testament Prophecy (Edinburgh: T. & T.

Chu k, 1892), p. 17.

York: George H. Doran Company, 1916), p. 16.

A F. Puuko, "Ekstatischc Propheten mit besonderer Reruksichtigung der

finnish-ugrischen Parallelen," ZAW, LX.III (1935), 23. For an evaluation of

ecstasy in the prophets of Israel, see Leon J. Wood, "Ecstasy and Israel's

Early Prophets,” BETS, IX (Summer, 1966), 125-38; Hobart E. Freeman, An