Parshah Commentary

Parshat Balak

Over the recent decades of Jewish dominance in Israel/Palestine, Zionist ideologues have drawn strength from a reading of the Torah as granting the Jews an exclusive and immutable title to this land. But a careful reading of the text itself suggests the Israelite claim on the territory is contingent and enmeshed with the valid claims of other peoples.

This week’s parshah, Balak, opens with a strategic alliance between two such peoples, Moab and Midian, in response to the threatening arrival of the Israelites at their doorstep. This pact takes place at a time of regional instability in and around Canaan—and not only because of the looming presence of the conquering Israelites. The region is home to a complex swirl of small clans and competing powers, divisible into two main groups. First there is the old guard—the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, and the Jebusites—which, according to Genesis, had resided in the land since the time after the Flood. Then there are several newer peoples, which date back only as far as the time of Abraham and descend from him and his family: Moab and Midian, as well as Edom, Amalek, and Ammon.

Both the old-timers and the newcomers had carved out territory for themselves, and so this crowded ensemble had engaged in its share of conquest and bloodshed. The Moabites, the protagonists of this week’s parshah, have felt the brunt of it: At the end of last week’s parshah, we learn that they had recently suffered major territorial losses to the Amorite King Sihon. This military defeat is key context for the political dynamics explored in our parshah. The Torah describes the Moabite King Balak as “king of Moab at that time,” implying, as per the Midrash Tanhuma, that he was newly appointed to the role. Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman, commonly known as the Ramban, points out the connection between Balak’s rise to power and the political instability caused by the Israelite military victories: The Moabites are in need of leadership because the Amorites, their occupying power, have just been soundly vanquished by the people of Israel.

There is a tragic irony to the narrative of this week’s parshah, which describes the Moabites’ fear of the Israelites and their subsequent frantic attempts to neutralize them. In truth, Israel has no designs on the Moabites’ territory and is even under a divine order to leave them alone. (Indeed, except in cases where they feel threatened, such as with Amalek, the Israelites are generally peaceful toward those with whom they have a sense of kinship and shared history. Thus, when the Israelites are denied passage through the land of Edom, for example, they simply turn away and seek another route, while against Sihon, the conquering Amorite, with whom they do not share a familial or historical bond, they choose war.) Why, then, does Moab fear Israel? Perhaps they see the Israelites as indiscriminate warmongers and, not knowing about the divine commandment against massacring them, assume they are next in line for slaughter.

But according to some accounts (for example, in the book of Judges), the Israelites had diplomatic communications with Moab akin to those with Edom, and explained that they came in peace. It is possible, then, that the Moabites did not fear conquest at all but rather the more quotidian demographic pressures on their resources. Indeed, in the opening verses of our parshah, we learn that “Moab was alarmed because the people was so numerous,” lamenting to the Midianites, “Now this horde will lick clean all that is about us as an ox licks up the grass of the field”; while this is generally read as a metaphorical expression of concern about impending violence, it could be taken more literally as a fear of losing grazing and crop land. Another suggestive clue is the verb ”vayakotz,” used by the Torah to characterize Moab’s feelings about the Israelites; it is often translated as “dread,” but it is the same root used to describe the Egyptians’ disgust with a growing Israelite population and Rebecca’s disgust with Esau’s Canaanite wives. Perhaps this is not an expression of mortal terror so much as xenophobia.

While these complex and ambiguous dynamics offer today’s reader no neat moral instruction, it is clear that this is no simple narrative of Jewish triumphalism over the “gentile.” It is true that the Torah contains horrible divine injunctions against certain clans in the land of Canaan, and we ought to wrestle with these while rejecting the Israelites’ notion that peace depends on familial lineage. Still, the text’s interest in these more precise political distinctions—and its evident sympathy for the Moabites and other peoples in the territory—suggests an understanding that others’ claims to life and land deserve respect.

Avi Garelick is a researcher and organizer based in Washington Heights, New York.