Greater than Moses?
Although this weekâs Torah reading is named for the Moabite king Balak, who sought to curse the Israelites, the real star of the show is the gentile prophet Balaam ben Be’orâwith a special comedy cameo by his talking ass. Three whole chapters of the Torah () are given over to the efforts of Balak and Balaam to curse the Jews. In the end, of course, God prevails, and on Friday nights in shul we still sing Balaamâs blessing, âMah tovu ohalekhah YaakovâHow goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel.â
Half a century ago, the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski summed up the situation in his small book, The Key to Heaven (Grove Press, 1972), when he imagined Balaamâs perspicacious and faithful ass pronouncing, âIn the final analysis, Iâm the most injured party. My master suffered only a moral unpleasantness, but my rump still hurtsâ (p. 28).
This biblical farce, however enjoyable, pokes fun at the gentile prophet and in doing so reveals the Bibleâs anxiety about Israelite exceptionalism. If God speaks with the gentiles, we might ask, how are we Jews special? God spoke with Adam and Eve, to be sure. But they lived a long time before Abraham, father of our faith. God also spoke with Noah. reports that Noah lived ten generations after Adam, right in the middle of pre-Abrahamic times. As Midrash wryly comments about Adam and then Noah: âThere is no shame when a King consults with his gardener . . . or his shipâs captain.â
It bears notice that in Islam, Noah (Nuh in Arabic) is counted as a prophet. In rabbinic Judaism, the medieval midrash Seder Eliahu (Rabbah 26 and Zuta 10) counts Noahâs son Shem as a prophet, too. The passage is worth quoting, as it leads us back to Balaam:
Shem prophesized for 400 years to all the peoples of the world, but they did not listen to him. From that point onward Eliphaz the Temanite, Zophar the Naamathite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Elihu son of Barakhel the Buzite, and [their long-suffering conversation partner] Job of the land of Uz [were prophets]. Balaam ben Be`or was the last of them all. There was no matter whatsoever that the Blessed Holy One did not reveal to Balaam . . . Balaam ben Be`or was even greater in wisdom than Moses. (Seder Elihu Rabbah 7)
Since that same midrash refers to Moses as âthe father of wisdomâ and âthe father of prophets,â this is an astonishing claim. Balaam was greater than Moses! As the rabbi of that midrash later explains it, the reason God sent these prophets to the gentiles is so they could not complain they were not also given the opportunity to accept the Torah.
Notwithstanding that dubious explanation, we must contemplate what it means that the Torah itself, as well as the rabbis interpreting it, acknowledge the fact that there are prophets who are not Jews. This challenges the persistent myth of ÂÌñÉç exceptionalism, which conveniently ignores that this same Torah teaches us that the One and Only God of the universe created all of humanity and loves all of Godâs creatures equally.
Yes, we recite in Friday night kiddush (and on other occasions), âasher bahar banu mikol haâamimâ[We praise you God] Who chose us from among all the peoples.â But given the monotheistic imperative that we all worship one and the same God, I prefer to recite (as I learned at the Jerusalem Shabbat table of our late teacher Rabbi Jacob Milgram łúâl): âasher bahar banu im kol haâamimâWho chose us, along with all the peoples.â
Which brings me back to Balaam. Can one then not reasonably say: There is no God but God, and Balaam, too, is Godâs prophet? I acknowledge that some of my scholarly colleagues have interpreted certain rabbinic midrashim about Balaam as referring to Jesus (e.g. Peter SchĂ€fer, Jesus in the Talmud, Princeton 2007). Whatâs confusing about this equation is that Jesus was ÂÌñÉç, not a gentile like Balaam. But what if Midrash Seder Elihu, composed in its final form in the ninth/tenth century CE under Islamic rule, is thinking of the preeminent non-ÂÌñÉç prophet of his time: Mohammed?
Could one then not reasonably say that there is no God but God, and Balaam/Mohammed is Godâs prophet? Articulating such a statement does not make me a Muslim. But it does make me a monotheist who recognizes, as have the Bible and centuries of rabbis before me, that there are prophets among all nations. The One God speaks to all of Godâs peoples, each in their own chosen status, be they Jews, Christians, Muslims, or for that matter, adherents of other, non-Abrahamic religions. Perhaps that is the lesson Balaam teaches us in our own strife-filled day, when he offered his aspirational prophecy millennia ago: âMah tovu ohalekhah YaakovâHow goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel.â Our dwellings are truly goodly when we live together with respect and blessings for our fellow human beings.
The publication and distribution of the JTS Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (łúâl) and Harold Hassenfeld (łúâl).
