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

September 2, 1972).

261

pre-Massoretic text. We feel it more judicious to attempt to explain the text

as it stands, rather than to attempt to reconstruct the text as it might have

been. Moreover, whether one wishes to use stress-counts or syllable-counts,

it is not necessary to insist on absolute balance between paired cola. On

this point Cyrus Gordon has resolutely insisted for caution in the attempt to

force absolute balance from metric reasons.¹ We may mention, however, that

a spirited defense of the reading of our bicola as rendered by the N. A. S. B.,

is to be found in Patterns in the Early Poetry of Israel by Stanley

Gevirtz.²

The second bicola of our verse. (23:7d-e) has synonymous par-

allelism with the pattern a b c // a b' c' . The meter of this bicola is 3:3.

The verbal forms in this bicola all have the so-called "paragogic He, " and

may be regarded as "emphatic imperatives," displaying the remnant of -a

in second millennium B. C. North West Semitics.³ These verbs are expressive

of the great urgency with which Balak beseeched Balaam to come.

"Ugaritic Prosody, " JNES, IX (1950), 124-33. Young concluded: "the poet

of Ugarit felt no constraint to abide by strict poetic codes, " p. 132. An

example of an attempt to place a rigid metrical and strophic format on the

Balaam oracles is to be seen in the article by Sigmund Mowinckel, "Der Ur-

sprung der Bil’amsage," ZAW, XLVIII (1930), pp. 233-71.

1964), pp. 135-37; compare GKC, 481, pp. 131-32; Jouon, Grammar 48d,

262

The verb rrx "to curse" is cognate to Akkadian araru (A), "to

is used with both gods and man as subject.¹ In Hebrew the word rrx has

an ominous history indeed. This is the word that Yahweh used to shatter the

calm of Eden in Genesis 3:14, when He cursed the serpent, and in verse 17

in His curse of the ground. In Genesis 4:11 it is used respecting the curse

on Cain for the crime of fratricide. Again, the same term is employed in

prophetic curse oracles such as Noah's curse of Canaan in Genesis 9:25.

But perhaps the most telling use of this word, and the reference

to which our minds should spring involuntarily, is Genesis 12:3:

And I will bless those who bless you,

But the one who contemns you I will curse [rroxA]

Of course! This is the point of the Balaam-Balak escapade in a moment.

It is a test case for the Abrahamic covenant in its most elemental and funda-

mental level Balaam was called by Balak to put Yahweh to the test, though

neither of them knew the nature of the roles in which they found themselves.

The second word for "curse" in our bicola is the term Mfz.²

enon in Arabic; cf. Gordon, UT, section 9. 20, p. 77, for the same in Ugaritic.

see GKC sections 64c, 67o, pp. 16 9, 179; Jouon, Grammaire, section 102k,

p. 272.

263

is so used of a camel. When the subject is a man, the word means "to speak

angrily.¹ Hence, this is an example of onomatopoeia.²

One of the most telling examples of the use of the Hebrew verb

is in Psalm 7:12 [Eng. v. 11]

God is a righteous judge,

And God is thundering indignation [ Mfezo ] every day!

Delitzsch comments on the force of this word as it is used in this psalm:

If God will in the end let his wrath break forth, He will not do it

without having previously given threatenings thereof every day,

viz. to the ungodly, cf. Isa. lxvi. 14, Mal. i. 4. He makes these

feel His Mfz beforehand in order to strike a wholesome terror into

them.³

In Numbers 23:7 the verb Mfz is colored by its relationship to

the verb rrx. It means to express indignation to the point of execration.^4
1 J. G. Hava, Al-Faraid: Arabic-English Dictionary (Beirut:

Catholic Press, 1964), p. 290.

Inc, , and Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969), p. 919.

Francis Bolton (3 vols.; reprint; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

House [n. d.]), I, 144.

⁴ Compare the Latin and German terms given by Lisowsky, KHAT,

p. 450: exsecrari, increpare; verwunschen, schelten. Goldberg reads:

"Yomm, schilt Israel!" Numeri, p. 99. Mowinckel, "Der Ursprung, "reads:

and verw,nsch' mir Israel!" Greenstone, Numbers, p. 254, reads

"And come, execrate Israel."

264

The next feature of this bicola to which our attention comes is

the parallelism "Jacob // Israel." It is significant that these two words form

a regular "a-b" pair in our oracles some seven times (Num. 23:7, 10, 21, 23,

23: 24:5, 17). In addition, the word "Israel occurs in 24:18 and the word

“Jacob" in 24:19. Stanley Gevirtz has commented on this phenomenon at

length in his monograph, citing the aberrant views of von Gall on this pair.²

He also notes that Binns and Marsh both state that this is a rare pair of words.

Such a claim is patently false, he argues, as the pair occurs some fifty-six

times.³

In the first verse of our oracle we have seen the introductory

monocolon followed by two lines of bicola comprising the exordium. In these

lines there is the setting of the stage. Balaam emphasizes the distance from which he has been summoned, and he states the reasons for which he has
¹ So Hengstenberg, A Dissertation on the History and Prophecies

of Balaam, trans. by J. E. Ryland (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1848), p. 402.

² Gevirtz, Patterns, pp. 52-55. Von Gall argued that the parallel

was used only by late writers. Compare also the attack on von Gall by John

Mauchlin, "The Balaam-Balak Songs and Saga, " Presentation Volume to William

Barron Stevenson, "Studia Semitica et Orientalia II (Glasgow: Glasgow Uni-

versity Oriental Society, 1945), pp. 75-76.

son (London: Methuen & Co. , Ltd. , 1927), p. 161; John Marsh, "The Book

of Numbers, " The Interpreter's Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick (12 vols.;

York: Abingdon Press, 1953), II, 255. For a fine treatment of "a--b"

words in Hebrew poetry, see Robert G. Boling, "'Synonymous' Parallelism in

the Psalms, " JSS, V (1960), 221-55.

265

come: to curse Israel, to execrate the nation of God.

to do that for which he was summoned is stated in these words:

lxe hBoqa xlo bq.ox, hmA

:hvhy MfazA xlo Mfoz;x, hmAU

How am I able to imprecate whom God has not imprecated?

And how am I able to execrate whom Yahweh has not execrated?

In this line of bicola we are told that God has not cursed Israel and that

Balaam is unable to curse Israel. The rather long meter of this bicola is 5:5

by stress count. The parallelism is a fully balanced, a b c // a' b' c' , with

the interesting shift in that the "b" and "c" members of each colon are made

of forms of the same verb.¹ The word hmA is used to introduce each colon,

as an adverbial interrogative, expressing that which is regarded as impossible.²

The new word for "curse" in this verse is bbq. Both uses

are in the Qal, but the second has a rare 3ms suffix as in Exodus 32:25

hforAP; "Aaron had let them get out of control."³ The verb bbq "to utter a

curse, " does not have any known cognates in the standard reference languages

it is a later type of poetic-rhetorical device than that of repetitive parallelism.

William Foxwell Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: A Historical

Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Com-

pany, Inc., 1968), p. 16.

61i, p. 131.

266

It is used regularly throughout our corpus (Num. 22:11, 17; 23:8, 11, 13, 25,

parallelism bbq//Mfz is found in Proverbs 24:24.¹

As to the absolute impossibility of Balaam to curse Israel, Unger

has written:

It was impossible for Balaam to curse or denounce Israel whom God

had blessed, 8-9. The reason is that Israel's standing as a redeemed

people was immutable in the light of the serpent "lifted up" (21:5-9) and

the water out of the struck rock (20:11). Israel's state was morally-

reprehensible, but this called for the Lord's disciplinary action against

the people, not His judgment or curse upon them (Rom 11:29).²

The imperfects of the verse are fine examples of potential imperfects which

are negated, and may be compared to "How am I able to bear alone . . . "

of Deuteronomy 1:12.³

The alternation of divine names as a criterion for source analysis

runs counter to our present verse where El and Yahweh are parallel. Noth

states, "the archaic word 'el ('God') is found with the same meaning as the

of verbs for cursing in verses 7-8 of our oracle and abstracts the pattern:

"Curse // execrate :: imprecate // execrate, " or a // b :: c // b. He finds

the same pattern in Genesis 27:29 in the words "serve // bow down :: be lord //

bow down." In our present text the silluq, intervenes; but the interchange may

still be deliberate, even if one does not wish to use the term "parallelism."

1966), p. 134.

267

sion employed in the Balaam discourse.”¹ Yet it was on the alternation of

“Yahweh” and "Elohim" that he concluded that chapters 22-24 are "obviously

not a unified whole.”² Indeed, the use of the designations for deity in the

Balaam materials must remain a constant embarrassment to literary criticism.³

Balaam blesses Israel as unique among the nations (23:9).--In

verse nine Balaam views Israel as unique among the nations:

Un.x,r;x, Myricu wxrome yKi

Un.r,UwxE tOfbAg;miU

NKow;yi ddAbAl; MfA-Nh,

:bwA.Hat;yi xlo MyiOGbaU

When from the top of the mountains I see him,

And from the hills I gaze at him:

Look! A people that dwells alone,

And among the nations it is not reckoned!

“The Old Testament Library," ed. G. Ernest Wright, et al. (Philadelphia: The

Westminster Press, 1968), p. 183.

² Ibid., p. 171.

³ The use of the designations for deity is developed in full below,

pp. 358-402. Even Eissfeldt had to abandon this criterion in the Balaam oracles.

See Otto Eissfeldt, "Die Komposition der Bileam-Erzahlung, Eine Nachprofung

von Rudolphs Beitrag -.ur Hexateuchkritik, ZAW, LVII (1939), 212-41. Com-

pare also J. Coppers, "Les Oracles de Bileam: leur origine litteraire et leur

portee prophetiaque, " Melanges Eugene Tisserant, Vol. I. Ecriture Sainte--

Vaticunna, 1964), p. 73. On the translation problems of this verse in the LXX,

see Henry Barclay Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, rev.

by Richard Rusden Ottley; appendix added by H. St J. Thackeray (reprint of

1902 ed.; New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1968), p. 332.

268

meter and is in synonymous parallelism, a b c // b' c' . The second line has

1:3 meter with synthetic parallelism, a b c // C'. The translation given

suggests that this verse contains a protasis and an apodosis in the respective

of bicola. This is the position maintained by Gevirtz.¹ The particle yKi

is thus to be taken in a temporal sense, rather than a causal sense, and it

does double duty for both members of the first line of bicola.²

The parallelism of the words "see" // "gaze" [ hxArA // rUw]

Is noted by Gevirtz in his monograph as another example of a fixed pair.³

Indeed, the same coupling of words, in the same order, may be found in

Balaam's fourth oracle, Numbers 24:17 a-b, as well as in Job 35:5.⁴ The

verb rxArA, "to see, " is an exceedingly common root in Hebrew, whereas the

parallel word rUw II, "to behold, regard, is relatively rare, being used

only sixteen times (ten of which are in Job). No cognates are given to this

latter word in the standard lexica. In Hosea 14:9 [Eng. v. 8] Yahweh asks,
^l Gevirtz, Patterns, p. 55.

² For the uses of this particle see Williams, WHS, sections

444-445, p. 74, and section 496, p. 84; GKC, section 164d, p. 502; Jouon,

Ugaritic, see UT, p. 41.6, item 1183; WUS, p. 142, item 1271.

not been isolated in Ugaritic. The verbal roots semantically related to "see"

are: (1) 'mr, (2) bdy, (3) ^cyn, and (4) ph.

269

answer and look after him. [ Un.r,UwxEva ytiynifA ynixE]." Its association in this

verse with "answer" justifies the rendering of the verb rUw, "to regard with

watchful care." In our verse the word means "to observe closely."

The parallelism "mountains // hills" [Myricu// tOfbAG;] in our

verse calls for comment. The usual pair in Hebrew is MyrihA// tOfbAG;, a set

occurring quite often in Hebrew poetry. The pair in our verse reflects a fixed

pair in Ugaritic poetry: gb^c "hill" // gr "mountain.” This latter pair occurs

Some six times in the Ugaritic texts and its use in our bicola seems to argue

for a northern dialect of Balaam.¹

The word Nh, "behold" calls attention to the apodosis in the

second bicola of our verse. Israel is a people unique from the nations. As

Isaiah 1:4 would indicate, the words yvg and Mf may be used as synonyms
¹ So Gevirtz, Patterns, p. 57. One may now confirm his count

by referring to the new volume by Richard E. Whitaker, A Concordance of

161; a volume which replaces G. Doublas Young's Concordance of Ugaritic

(Roma: Pontificum Institutum Biblicum, 1956). Whitiker shows a listing of

the word gr some 57 times in all. As to the problem of associating Hebrew

rUc with Ugaritic gr, see Gevirtz, Patterns, pp. 56-57. The letter g

is polyphonous in Ugaritic as may be seen in the chart in UT, p. 28. It may

be stated to be somewhat surprising, therefore, that KBL does not list.gr

as cognate with rUc on p. 799. Albright speaks of the association of these

terms in his article, "Oracles, " p. 212. The most recent discussion of the

parallelism gb^c // gr is to be found in RSP, p. 306, item II. 449. There is

the following word of caution in this work, however "It must be noted . . .

that gr is probably the least precisely defined vocable in Ugaritic, " p. 435,

item III. 94.

270

clearly implied (note the xlo in the second member). Speiser writes that "where

the Bible juxtaposes ^cam and goy, it does so deliberately and for purposes of

subtle distinction."¹ The word Mf would seem to relate more to a sense of

community than does yOG. Often, but not always, the word Mfa is used

for Israel, whereas yOG is reserved for non-Hebrew peoples.² In our verse

Israel the Mfa is totally distinct from the MyiOG.

The key term in the bicola seems to be the word ddAbAl; "alone."

This word is related to the root ddb I, "to be separated, isolated," and

may be compared with XXXXX which means: II "to separate;" IV "to divide;"

V “to become separated;” and X “to be alone, independent.”³ Significant par-

allel passages in the Hebrew Bible for the use of this word include:

[ The leper ] shall remain unclean all the days during which he has

the infection; he is unclean. He shall live alone [ddABA]; his

dwelling shall be outside the camp. [Lev. 13:46 ]

So Israel dwells securely;

The fountain of Jacob secluded.[ ddABA] [ Deut 33:28 ]

Yahweh alone [ ddABA ] guides him,

And there was no foreign god with him. [Deut. 32:12]
¹ E. A. Speiser, "'People' and 'Nation' of Israel, " Oriental and

Biblical Studies: Collected Writings of E. A. Speiser, ed. J. J. Finkelstein

and Moshe Greenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967),

p. 164.

² See the summary of the usage in BDB, p. 156.

³ Lane, I, i, 160-63.

271

dwells alone," by adding the synthetic parallel, "and among the nations it is

reckoned." The term bw.AHat;yi, is a Hithpael from bwH, and as such is

a hapax legomenon. The Qal of this root means "to think, account," and is

used widely; the root also occurs in Niphal and Piel themes. Although dis-

counted by Gevirtz,¹ the term bwAHat;yi seems admirably fitted as a parallel

for the word ddAbAl;. Israel is distinct from the nations. She is unique. This

fact seems to overwhelm Balaam. He looks intently and steadfastly at the

nation, and then shouts: "Look!' --Here is a people that is utterly distinct

from all the nations!" This thought forms one of the important contributions

of the Balaam oracles to the theology of Israel Israel is "alone" because

she is distinctly Yahweh's possession (Deut. 4:20), and Yahweh's inheritance

(Deut. 9:29). This was part of her promise (Exod. 19:5-6), and this was one

of the themes sung by Moses as well as Balaam (compare Deut. 32.7 9- 33:

28-29).

Buber remarks on Israel's distinction merely in terms of her

being an Mf rather than a yvg.² Yet it is more than her sense of community
¹ Gevirtz goes quite his own way in this bicola. He dismisses

the hapax legomenon merely because it is a hapax legomenon and thus does

not fit into his scheme of fixed pairs, Patterns, p. 59. Such is an example

of a method becoming a master. We may cite Freedman's strong words of

caution against emendation for whatever reason, "Prolegomenon," pp. xxxix-

xli. K. A. Kitchen has stated that "No matter how brilliant, or finely adorned

with all the critical acumen of scholarly judgment, guesswork remains quali-

tatively guesswork, from the point of view of a strict and proper methodology."

"Historical Method and Early Hebrew Tradition, " TB, XVII (1966), 65, n. 3.

² Martin Buber, Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant

272

point to be developed in the subsequent oracles. Moriarty writes, "Israel

is Yahweh’s chosen people, set apart from all other nations. It is to be

different from them just as Yahweh is different from their gods."¹ Even more

strongly stated is this estimation by Habel:

A sovereign choice and historical selection of this caliber

inevitably involves a choice on the part of the chosen. Israel is

surrounded by the isolation of divine intervention. Israel is different

by virtue of this interference; it is qados, because of Yahweh's self-

revelation in the election. The pagan prophet Balaam also senses this

characteristic. [Emphasis in original.]²

When verse 9 is understood aright, it lends a major contribution

to our theology of God and His people. They are alone and distinct, because

they are related to him who is holy and unique. This verse implies more about

Yahweh than it states about His people.

grand words of verse 9, Balaam then expresses his utter futility:

bqofEya rpafE hnAmA ymi

lxerAW;yi fbaro-tx, rPAs;miU

MyriwAy; tOm ywip;na tmoTA

:UhmoKA ytiyriHExa yhit;U