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“Balak son of Tzippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites, and Moav was in exceeding fear before the people, since they were so many; they felt dread before the Children of Israel.”
-Numbers 22:2-3
Section One (Parsha Debrief):
This week’s Parsha (Numbers 22:2-25:9) contained: Balak hiring Balaam, Balaam saying no (or so it seemed), Balaam then agreeing to go, but only speaking what God tells him, animal cruelty, a talking donkey, Balak trying three times to get Isreal cursed, the messianic vision in Balaam’s final prophecy, and Phinehas driving a spear through people.
When I first started drafting this post, it was a leap year (don’t do the math—it’s embarrassing how long this has sat on the shelf 😬). But that timing matters. In non-leap years, Parashat Balak (Numbers 22:2–25:9) is read with Parashat Chukat—which I unpacked in Preparation for Battle. When we get to the Luke connection in Section Two, you’ll see why that pairing is so important.
In the chapters leading up to Balak and Balaam, we read about Edom denying passage, but no curses. Israel striking a deal to defeat the Canaanite king, but no curses. Journeying around Moab. The defeat of the Amorites. But still, no curses.
We read about so many territories in a short amount of Text, then suddenly, the narrative slows down. Three entire chapters are devoted to Balak seeking curses through Balaam. Why? Why this level of attention?
Could it be that Balak echoes characters we’ve seen before—specifically, gentile characters?
According to the Rabbis at Aleph Beta, Balak’s words in Numbers 22:2—everything that was done, by Israel—mirror Yitro’s words in Exodus 18:1 (Footnote 1).
Maybe the authors want us to wrestle with a parallel or juxtaposition between Balak and Yitro. Like in Exodus, word of Israel, and God’s protection of them, are spreading through the land, and going ahead of them. In Yitro’s case, he responds with joy.
“[Yitro] was delighted to hear about all the good things the Lord had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians. He said, “Praise be to the Lord, who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and of Pharaoh, and who rescued the people from the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly.”
-Exodus 18:9-11
Balak, on the other hand, responds in fear and loathing.
Yitro hears and rejoices. He comes near. He blesses. Balak hears and fears. He curses.
And it’s not just Yitro. The Rabbis at Aleph Beta point out that Balak also echoes Pharaoh. He uses Pharaoh’s language—“many,” “mighty,” “revulsed” (Footnotes 2 and 3). Like Pharaoh, he erroneously sees a growing, foreign population as a threat to national identity and control. Like Pharaoh, he responds with manufactured urgency and manipulates the narrative—reshaping how others see Israel to justify control and to protect his own dominance.
Unlike Pharaoh, Balak seems to recognize the God of Israel immediately.
He knows about Israel’s victories. He knows they didn’t win by military strength alone. And still, he sends for a sorcerer to curse them.
Pharaoh refuses to see God at all.
Yitro hears about divine power and chooses collaboration.
Balak sees divine power and chooses control.
Maybe Torah is inviting us to ask not just what we believe, but how we respond to what we see.
This theme is reinforced in the blessing inversion between Abraham and Balaam.
To Abraham, God says: “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you (Genesis 12:3).”
Balak, on the other hand says, “Those you bless are blessed, and those you curse are cursed. (Numbers 22:6)”
It’s subtle, but crucial.
What Balak says to Balaam is a distortion of God’s words to Abraham. In Genesis, not only is it God holding the power, but the blessing and the curse come after an action toward God’s family—those who bless God’s family get blessed. Whereas, Balak’s words have the acts of blessing and cursing just handed out for profit, not connected to the mission of God—it’s a political transaction.
In recognizing God, Balak could have brought about the collaboration of the gentile and Jewish people (sounds like Isaiah 2 to me), instead, he opted for power.
Section Two (Connection to NT + haftarah):
In the parsha Text, Israel is on the verge of a massive transition. Aaron has just died. Moses has been barred from entering the land. The generation of leaders who carried Israel out of Egypt is stepping off the stage. They’ve guided the people through plagues, manna, rebellion, and war—but they will not lead them across the Jordan. And what’s more, God’s provision is about to shift—no more daily manna, no more water from rocks.
The land will require a different kind of faith.
And so will Jesus’ followers.
As we turn to our Luke Text, we find Jesus atop a mountain joined by Moses and Elijah. It’s not an accident that it’s these two who appeared in glorious splendor. Both Moses and Elijah were retired by God. We are told, “They spoke about [Jesus’] departure (Luke 9:31a).” They are there to pass on wisdom!
Jesus, like Moses, will not accompany his followers into the next phase. Jesus, like Elijah, will ascend.
Jesus has been preparing his followers for the moment when he will no longer be with them. Just as Moses had to hand the people off to Joshua. Just as Elijah passed his spirit to Elisha.
And like Israel on the border of Moab, Jesus’ followers will be forced to carry the mission forward without the visible signs of provision.
The transfiguration is about transition (Footnote 4).
The voice from the cloud says it all: “This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to Him.”
When the leaders are gone, the voice remains—the mission continues.
Section Three (missing the mark):
But do we listen to Him?
Have we heard what Jesus was actually trying to say—not just here, but all along?
Because what passes for listening in the modern church is often just projection. Pastors have taken the radiant Jesus and clothed him in military fatigues. They preach a weaponized Messiah who brings peace through strength.
This is not just a doctrinal misstep. It is a failure of discipleship. And it is exactly the kind of failure Micah 5:6-6:8, the haftarah passage for Parashat Balak, speaks to.
The prophet recalls the Exodus, the deliverance from Egypt—and, pointedly, the moment with Balak and Balaam. Micah reminds the people that God was the one who protected them from curse, even when others plotted. But then comes the turn.
“With what shall I come before the Lord? With burnt offerings? Thousands of rams? Rivers of oil? My firstborn child?”
-Micah 6:7
It’s a liturgical satire. A mockery of leaders who think God wants ritual instead of relationship, performance instead of proximity.
“He has told you, O human, what is good:
To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”-Micah 6:8
This is not vague spiritual encouragement. Micah uses specific language that most pastors refuse to define.
Justice in Micah 6:8 is mishpat—the reordering of a world that has been thrown out of alignment. Not punitive retribution, but restorative placement. It’s about putting people where they belong. It’s connected to family, not control.
Neither mercy nor faithfulness in Micah 6:8 actually conveys the action-oriented nature of this call. The Hebrew word here is checed—checed are great acts of lovingkindness (as first described in Mission of God). It’s the fierce love that holds the broken close when they can’t hold themselves.
Mishpat, checed, and humility are what the Lord requires.
But the church has replaced chesed with allegiance. It has replaced mishpat with strength. And it has replaced humility with spectacle.
The voice from the cloud said, “Listen to him.”
Not reinterpret him.
Not repurpose him for empire.
Not claim him while contradicting everything he taught.
Jesus never modeled peace through strength. He walked into death to disarm it. He blessed the poor. He fed the hungry. He refused to curse.
Those who preach otherwise were never listening.
Section Four (real-world applications):
“When we open our eyes to see the full humanity of others, we are able to see their goodness.”
-Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, in When We Look to See
That insight, from Rabbi Ruttenberg, reframes the entire story of Balaam. He’s often remembered as a spiritual mercenary. But what matters isn’t what he was paid to say—it’s what God opened his eyes to see.
When Balaam looked out and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the Spirit of God came to him and he spoke his message:
“The prophecy of Balaam son of Beor, the prophecy of one whose eye sees clearly, the prophecy of one who hears the words of God, who sees a vision from the Almighty, who falls prostrate, and whose eyes are opened: How beautiful are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel!”
-Numbers 24:2-5, emphasis added
God wanted him to see. God gave him the sight to bless. And it’s that act of seeing—the humanizing gaze—that Moab refused.
Moab saw a people and chose fear.
Moab stirred up strife.
Moab turned to manipulation and control.
Moreover, Balak does what evil still does today.
Balak doesn’t show Balaam the whole people—he shows him the edges. The parts most vulnerable to distortion.
“Then Balak said to him, “Come with me to another place where you can see them; you will not see them all but only the outskirts of their camp. And from there, curse them for me.” So he took him to the field of Zophim on the top of Pisgah…”
-Numbers 23:13-14, emphasis added
And again, “Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, overlooking the wasteland (Numbers 23: 28).”
Balak tried to shape what Balaam would see. It’s the oldest propaganda tactic in the book—control the frame, and you control the curse.
Balak did what still happens today—show clips of a dark-skinned person engaging in some ‘non-normalized’ activity on repeat until the masses believe all people blessed with more melanin are criminals, rapists, crappy parents, etc. We end up judging an entire people by the actions of a few actors put on loop mode. Once we believe, it’s easy to curse.
Scholar of American political rhetoric, Dr. Jennifer Mercieca writes,
“The more a frame is repeated to describe reality, the more ‘sticky’ it becomes… the more we think within the parameters of the frame.”
-Dr. Jennifer Mercieca, in Frame Warfare: The Invisible Propaganda War
In other words, perception can be manipulated.
Mercieca warns, “Adopting a frame… essentially ends the debate over that issue.” That’s why modern propagandists don’t just argue over border policy—they work to frame it. Is it an invasion or a humanitarian crisis? The frame decides not just policy but perception.
When we’re shown only the outskirts of a people—only their failures, only their margins—those images become the frame. And the frame becomes the truth. And that’s why so many people stop seeing the image of God in the refugee, the protestor, the stranger, the camp at the edge of Moab.
But, Balaam, in the face of that pressure to stereotype, looked again. He saw the families. He saw their order, their wholeness, their dignity. And he blessed.
That blessing, spoken by a foreign prophet, is still treasured by Jews today. A non-Israelite saw the holiness of Israel’s encampment and refused to curse what God had already called good.
This is the pivot point, blessing is not something we say.
Blessing begins with how we see.
“When we bless—when we give over of ourselves to others, when we offer something holy and true to another—we also expand our capacity to see them.”
-Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, in When We Look to See
We live in a world that normalizes dehumanization. A world that teaches us to sort, not see. To fear, not feel. To recite Scripture while ignoring the Spirit.
In this culture, that’s the radical act. “He has told you what is good.”
To do mishpat. To love checed. To walk humbly.
What we choose to see will shape what we choose to speak, what we choose to do.
So look.
Next Week’s Readings: Numbers 25:10–30:1; Luke 9:37-43a
Footnotes:
- Rivky Stern unpacks these connections in A Lesson of Fact and Fiction from King Balak of Moab.
- Rabbi David Block highlights the Pharaoh connections in The Hidden Lessons Behind the Story of Balak.
- We’ve discussed Pharaoh’s rhetoric before in podcast Episode 14- A New Pharaoh in Town.
- At the southernmost point in Israel’s journey is Mount Sinai, the mountain of revelation. At the northernmost edge is Mount Hermon—traditionally understood as the site of the Transfiguration we are reading about in our connected Luke portion. And right in the middle, almost equidistant as the crow flies, lies Moab—where Balak summons Balaam to curse Israel.
It seems fitting, then, that here Balaam offers one of the earliest messianic visions in Torah—
“I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near.
A star will come out of Jacob;
a scepter will rise out of Israel.”
—Numbers 24:17A Gentile prophet sees the shape of what’s coming. And, its commentary is Jesus’ transfiguration. In that moment, we’re reminded that the messianic vision was never just about power or land or curses reversed. It was about a people prepared to carry the mission forward, even when the leaders step back.
Two leaders who themselves exited before the story was complete. Two prophets who were taken up rather than finishing what they started—speak with Jesus about… His departure.
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