{"id":50378,"date":"2019-02-27T11:09:39","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T09:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=50378"},"modified":"2022-08-17T08:32:09","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T05:32:09","slug":"holiness-in-imperfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/holiness-in-imperfection\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiness In Imperfection"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The story of Balaam, the famed gentile seer hired to curse Israel, is complex and elusive. What kind of man is Balaam\u2014a villain, a saint, or something in between? What are the three long chapters dedicated to his story (Numbers 22-24) intended to teach us? And what, readers often wonder, is the purpose of the talking donkey?<\/span><\/p>\n

Read the story of Balaam and skip over the donkey episode and you might well come away with the impression that Balaam is a good, upstanding man, perhaps even a righteous one. The Moabite king Balak offers him great financial reward for cursing Israel, but Balaam repeatedly insists that he will not defy God, not even for \u201ca house full of silver and gold\u201d (22:8,18,38).<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet a crucial part of the story is the episode with the donkey, in which Balaam is brutally lampooned. Balaam claims prophetic sight (24:4,17), but he cannot even see what his donkey sees clearly (three times!); he proudly declares that God places words in his mouth (22:38, 23:5, 16), yet God does the same for his donkey (22:28), and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Bible scholar Gordon Wenham astutely notes, Balaam is to Balak as Balaam\u2019s donkey is to Balaam: Just as Balaam drives his donkey to do his bidding until the latter is brought up short by the angel of God, so also Balak drives Balaam to do his bidding until he, too, is stopped by an encounter with God.<\/span> \u201cIn truth,\u201d Bible scholar Jacob Milgrom writes, \u201cBalaam is depicted on a level lower than his ass: More unseeing in his inability to detect the angel, more stupid in being defeated verbally by his ass, and more beastly in subduing it with his stick whereas it responds with tempered speech.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What are we to learn from God\u2019s utilization of the complex, deeply imperfect figure of Balaam to bless Israel? Perhaps the Torah wants us to know that one can be inspired, and can even be a prophet, without necessarily being a blameless saint. More, the Torah wants us to internalize the reality that God can make use even of people who are deeply flawed to achieve significant and holy ends. This is neither a trite claim nor a truism; on the contrary, it is the reality that makes covenant possible, since we are all fragile, broken, and sometimes corrupt. God uses (only!) imperfect people to achieve God\u2019s ends in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":101664,"id":101664,"title":"-6201044ff2166--6201044ff2167gen2-crack imperfect.jpg","filename":"6201044ff2166-6201044ff2167gen2-crack-imperfect.jpg.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/cetwpuploads.blob.core.windows.net\/wp929\/uploads\/2018\/07\/6201044ff2166-6201044ff2167gen2-crack-imperfect.jpg.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-mercy-of-a-no-good-world\/6201044ff2166-6201044ff2167gen2-crack-imperfect-jpg\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"6201044ff2166-6201044ff2167gen2-crack-imperfect-jpg","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":34028,"date":"2022-02-07 11:36:47","modified":"2022-08-17 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