Balaam's Place in the Book of Numbers - Swarthmore College

Balaam's Place in the Book of NumbersAuthor(s): Mary DouglasSource: Man, New Series, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 411-430Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2804233 .

Accessed: 24/03/2013 17:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Man.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 130.58.64.71 on Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:16:50 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rai

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2804233?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


BALAAM'S PLACE IN THE BOOK OF NUMBERS

MARY DOUGLAS

London

There have been many suggestions about how the story ofBalaam fits into the Book of Numbers. They range from a simple moral lesson for the enemies of Israel, to a literary device that gives a mirror image of Abraham and the binding of Isaac, to doubt over whether it belongs in the Book of Numbers at all. None seeks to relate the story to the political context of the fifth century BCE when the editing of the Pentateuch was completed.

The interpretation offered here follows two anthropological traditions, one which always expects a text to be placed in its historical setting, the other which requires that the conventions of the literary form in which it is presented be examined. On this approach, the literary style of the Balaam story shows it to be a tale within a tale, and as is usual in such cases, it carries a metonymic summary of the message of the larger story in which it is found. When the history of the post-exilic period is taken into account, Balaam appears as a lampoon of the govemor ofJudah, who is ridiculed for pretending to be able to bestow God's blessings and curses.

Some problems about Balaam's story

The story of Balaam has excited much comment through the ages. Here we are particularly interested in the question of what it is doing in the Book of Num- bers.1 A strictly anthropological interpretation would depend heavily on knowledge of local historical conditions. The anthropologist always needs to know as much as possible about the situation in which a story was issued, who produced the text, and about the intended receiver. As far as I know, this con- straint on free interpretation has never been accepted by the many anthropologists who have published commentaries on the Bible, and for good reason, since Bible scholars are not at all agreed on the dating of the various texts. What is attempted below is a speculative interpretation which follows the gen- erally agreed dating of the final editing. Numbers was edited in the period during and soon after the exile in Babylon; that is, in the fifth and sixth centuries BCE. Interpretation of the Pen-tateuch usually assumes that there were no opposed factions among the priests, and that the priestly editors were not involved in the major political and social problems of their day. Under this assumption there is no scope for an anthropologist's reading of Numbers, and it must be admitted from the outset that this article defies such a professionally unacceptable con- straint. If the editors were living in the second temple community described

*Huxley Memorial Lecture 1992

Man (N.S.) 28, 411-430



412 MARY DOUGLAS

in Ezra and Nehemiah, well-known social and political problems beset that community and it is not too bold from an anthropological point of view to consider what traces the text shows of an editorial sensitivity to the major issues of their times.

The story is about Balaam's encounter with the God of Israel, when the King of Moab tried to hire Balaam to curse the people of Israel. The fact that a foreign prophet recognizes the same God and speaks with him, is commanded by him, and is even made his mouthpiece, is one of the fascinating elements in the story. It is the only place in the Bible where a foreign seer, diviner, magician, call him what you will, is the source of true prophecy and blessing. It has some of the most exquisite poetry in the Pentateuch. It is also the only place in the whole Bible where an animal receives the gift of speech. (The serpent who spoke to Eve in the Garden of Eden was Satan in disguise).

In many of the rabbinical commentaries Balaam is treated as a thoroughly bad character, the enemy of Israel, the personification of evil. But the story itself does not lead to such a conclusion. The role could be played by a foolish character who gets everything wrong and is made to look ridiculous, but there seems to be no clue in the story itself that he is going to turn out to be a villain. Only after the story of Balaam is ended do we learn that he taught the women of Moab how to seduce the men of Israel away from their religion (Num. 31:8, 16) and was punished for this by death on the battlefield. So his evil reputation comes from things he did which are not part of the story as told in chapters 22-24.

The traditional reason for his story being in the Book of Numbers is because of the blessings on Israel that poured out of Balaam's mouth (Noth 1968): The story celebrates the powerlessness of Israel's enemies (Budd 1984: 271). But the story is clearly a satire, and part of the interpretation must be to know who or what is being satirized. In most theological works contemporary political concerns tend to figure prominently. If there is satire in the story, who is Balaam parodying? And who is the King of Moab? And who is the ass?

The book is based on a variety of different sources. It is thought to be a very old story, or rather several very old stories. According to some, there were pre-Israelite traditions in Canaan in which Balaam would have been a powerful, good and honourable person, though for the people of Israel he came to be portrayed as an enemy (de Vaulx 1972: 257). In another argument based on linguistic evidence the story of his ass's vision of God would be a late interpola- tion (Budd 1984: 263-4).2 But it is doubtful whether the different sources can be systematically disentangled to any useful interpretive purpose (Budd 1984: 271). However, the story is evidently not a priestly tradition (Budd 1984: 271), and this perhaps has been the justification for not looking to priestly concerns for interpreting it. I will stoutly maintain an anthropologist's professional bias that the priestly editors would not have kept it in the final redaction if it did not serve their purposes, some of which will have been political. The satire will have been aimed at opponents of a programme favoured by the priests.

Balaam's story

As the Book of Numbers is not very well known, a summary of Balaam's story is in order. At the point at which he enters, the Book of Numbers has given an



MARY DOUGLAS 413

account of the victorious campaign of the people of Israel against the Canaanites (21: 3). The people of Israel have travelled beyond the point at which they pose a threat to Moab, and the story of Balaam finds them camped on Moab's border (de Vaulx 1972: 254). Their military triumphs have made Balak, king of Moab, afraid (21: 35). He summons a foreign magician, Balaam, to utter a curse against the armies of Israel.

King Balak's messengers arrive in Balaam's home; the geography is confusing, and it is difficult to work out where his home is, but he is a foreigner. Carrying his fee, they deliver the message. The sage consults the Lord. On being told not to curse the people of Israel, he refuses to go with the messengers who return and report. King Balak sends again to Balaam, offering wealth and honours. Balaam refuses again:

If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord, to do less or more (21: 18).

However, he invites the messengers to stay overnight, so that he can again consult the Lord. This time the Lord's answer is enigmatic: if the men ask him again, he is to go with them, but he will utter only the words that the Lord puts into his mouth. Evidently they do ask him a third time, for next morning Balaam saddles his ass and goes with the princes of Moab. God is angry with Balaam for going, and the angel of the Lord bars his path with a drawn sword. No one sees the angel except the ass, who tries to turn aside. Balaam beats her, but the angel of the Lord still bars the way which is now a narrow path between two walls; trying to avoid the angel the ass crushes her rider's foot against a wall, for which Balaam beats her again. The third time the angel leaves no room for evasion, and the ass does what her kind always does when frustrated, she lies down under her rider. And he beats her again. Then the Lord opens the ass's mouth and she speaks to Balaam as a faithful servant might reproach an unreasonable master: what have I done to deserve these three beatings? Balaam is furious, says she is making a fool of him, and wishes he had a sword for then he would kill her. An odd thing to say, for no one ever took a sword against an ass, and still less against the ass he is sitting on. The patient beast of burden does make Balaam into a figure of fun. To be sitting on an animal which lies down is bad enough, but when the animal turns round and rebukes her master, that begins to be absurd, and when the master enters into angry dialogue with his mount, that is sheer farce.

All this time Balaam has not seen the angel of the Lord, who now appears and rebukes Balaam for beating the ass three times; she has recognized the angel and turned out of the path three times, and if she had not done so, the angel would have killed Balaam and saved the ass (22: 31-33). Saved by an ass! What a humiliating rescue for the great foreign sage. At this Balaam abjectly begs forgive- ness, saying that he did not know that the angel of the Lord was standing in his way; he proposes to turn round obediently and go straight home. The angel now instructs him to pursue his journey, but only to speak the words that he, the angel of the Lord, gives him to speak.

After this Balaam meets King Balak, and warns him that he can only speak the words that the Lord will put in his mouth. Three times King Balak tries to persuade him to curse Israel, three times when Balaam opens his mouth glorious



414 MARY DOUGLAS

praises and blessings on Israel pour out. The last time Balaam repeats the words of his greeting, that he would not, for any amount of gold or silver, be able to go beyond the word of the Lord. King Balak then dismisses him in disgust (24: 10-11). Before going home Balaam gives three more oracles, praising and blessing Israel and foretelling the downfall of Moab (21: 15-24). The story is over, King Balak goes to his place and Balaam goes to his.

Only later (31: 8, 16) do we learn the sequel. Balaam taught the women of Moab to deceive the men of Israel and lead them into apostasy. For that sin was he killed. There have been no signs so far that Balaam was not a god-fearing, honest man. We can see no reason to doubt the sincerity of his protests and apologies. Foolish, yes, but not sinister: true, he failed to see the angel, but then the angel did not reveal himself to him, so that was not really his fault. He punctiliously said that he would utter only what the Lord tells him, and that he could not curse a people who have been blessed; was that not praiseworthy? He repented when the angel told him he was wrong. In spite of all this correct behaviour, the Jewish tradition is that Balaam was greedy for the wealth that King Balak promised him (de Vaulx 1972: 263). Since he could not earn the gold and silver by cursing Moab's enemy, he used his magician's art to teach the women of Moab to seduce the men of Israel. On Moses' word, no less, we learn in chapter 31 that the idolatry described in chapter 25 was the outcome of Balaam's wiles. Is there something that we have missed in the story that would justify this reputation for wickedness?

Various interpretations

Balaam goes down in history as a treacherous, corrupt magician.3 Though he actually blessed Israel, he gets no credit for that. The only good word for him is from Micah (6: 3-5). He is otherwise remembered as the prophet who would have sold Israel to the King of Moab had God not circumvented him. Deuteron- omy implies that he did utter some curse against Israel, to which God in his mercy refused to listen (Deut. 23: 4-5). Joshua repeats this Josh. 24: 9-10). But as far as we are told in the story, Balaam never pronounced any curse. The Christian interpretation is just as hard on him. Peter counted him among false prophets, castigating him for his love of gain (2 Peter 2: 14-15). Jude put Ba- laam's teaching in the same bracket as 'the way of Cain' Jude 11). In Revelation Balaam dwells near Satan's throne (Rev. 2: 14).

When did he do these bad things? When did he meet the Moabite women? We are not told. We are told that when he set out on his ass God was angry with him and barred his way. But why was God angry? We are not told. The story tempts us to conclude that God has not been completely straightforward in his instructions to Balaam. Was God acting capriciously? The Western reader might well feel sorry for a good name slandered, and ask why, if it is calumny, is it so bitter? How are we to account for this slightly ridiculous anti-hero becoming a monster of evil in early biblical interpretation?

Let us assume that the question is worth asking. If the Book of Numbers is as confused, incoherent and inconsequential as some commentators have supposed



MARY DOUGLAS 415

(Eissfeldt 1965; Noth 1968; and for a summary, see Wenham 1981),4 there is no point in interrogating it for meaning. However, if some principle of selection was used by the priestly editors, the question stands: Why was this story selected for inclusion? Why the satire? Who is being satirized?

First, is his story there as a moral allegory? The difficulty here is that it is not clear that Balaam deserves the harsh judgement of posterity. 'Saint or sinner?' is the title of Jacob Milgrom's essay on Balaam in his magisterial commentary on Numbers (Milgrom 1990: 469-71). Allegorical interpretation of the Bible is a long established tradition (Pepin 1976), and moral allegory still flourished in the nineteenth-century comment (Cox 1884; Chandler 1891) as well as now in folklore. However, I will argue that from the story itself it is perfectly clear that the character of Balaam is unequivocally bad. His morals are not at issue. Inter- pretation does not have to worry on that score. He could well be there to teach a moral.

Then consider the historical approach. Assuming Balaam was a real prophet, living where he was said to live, archaeologists have found interesting inscriptions with the name of 'Balaam the magician'. A plaster text found at Deir 'Alla in 1967 has been subjected to scrupulous analysis of fragments (Hackett 1984). However, the historicity of Balaam is a question that hardly helps with interpreting the story. If the editors had any literary skills, we can suppose they were capable of archaizing their style, or at least we can suppose that they selected archaic bits of history or legend for their own theological purposes. The question remains: why should they want this particular folk tale from early Israel or pre-Is- rael in their treatise? To know where or when the bits of it were garnered does not answer that. Not everything that really happened on the march of the people of Israel to the promised land could be recorded in the Bible.

Then there is the literary analysis which links the story to the rest of the Bible. The calling of Balaam by King Balak echoes other callings of great prophets by kings in the Bible. Balaam resembles the prophet Micaiah who always prophesied evil to the King of Israel (1 K.22: 9). There is the close similarity between the beginning of Balaam's dealings with Balak and the beginning of Elijah's dealings with King Ahazia, also at war with Moab (2 K.1). In both cases the bad king sends his messengers to the prophet, who twice refuses to go with them. When, the third time, he does go, the king who sought to employ him comes to a disastrous end. The story also has perverse echoes of Elisha's delivery of the King of Moab into the hands of Israel (2 K.3: 16). Can Balaam be read as a structural opposite of Elisha?

The most fascinating of the literary analyses treats the Balaam narrative as a satirical inversion of the story of the binding of Isaac (Safran 1988). Abraham called by God rose up early and saddled his ass, Balaam called by King Balak rose in the morning and saddled his ass; both took two servants; Abraham was obe- dient, for love of God, Balaam was disobedient, for hate of Israel. In each case the angel appeared and cancelled what had been taken to be God's intention as understood by the protagonists, for Abraham understood he had been instructed to sacrifice his beloved son, and Balaam understood that he could go with the messengers and offered to go back when he learnt from the angel that he had done wrong. Abraham took up his knife to kill his son (Gen. 22: 6) and Balaam



416 MARY DOUGLAS

wanted to kill his ass with a sword. J.D. Safran, who developed this parallel, observes that in Abraham's story the ass is passive and a minor character, while the ass in Balaam's story is a major character, possessing will and intelligence and able to discern divine revelation. We could go further and see a parallel between Isaac who is carrying the load of wood for his own sacrifice, and Balaam's beast of burden who recognises the angel of the Lord; Isaac who is saved by the angel from his father's knife and the ass whom the angel saved from Balaam's sword, and whom the angel would have saved from God's anger if the Lord had killed Balaam.

Safran mentions another analysis which proposes that the ass's story is a burl- esque of Balaam, inserted to ridicule the foreign seer who might otherwise be thought to have too sympathetic a character (Rofe 1979). Thus we have two levels of reference, one inside the other: the ass satirizing Balaam, and Balaam's disobedience presented as a 'reflection' or mirror of Abraham's obedience. The meaning of the story would be a self-contained literary conceit, an embellishment of Abraham's story. However, when the normal uses of this art form are borne in mind, a further level of interpretation needs to be explored. It is possible that the story is a great deal more central for developing the theme of the Book of Numbers itself.

The rhetoric of the story within the story A different thesis is here proposed, arguing that the ass's story bears a strong political message. The story of Balaam is already a play within the play, like the play within the play in Hamlet, or like the story in the story in many similar legends (Finnegan 1992; Babcock 1977). It also has its own story within itself, the ass's story. Numbers exemplifies a high degree of literary sophistication. So far from being contradictory, confused, incoherent as some commentators have found it, the opposite is nearer the mark for the Book of Numbers. A work of consummate artistry, it comes up to the highest standards of literary elegance of the time and region, a masterpiece in an archaic literary genre. Nothing is there by accident, so a story mapped on to Isaac's binding is of paramount significance. The ass's story underlines Balaam's story, and Balaam's story underlines Ab- raham's and Isaac's story: what is all this emphasis for? The argument advanced here is that all three levels point a political moral for the time of the redaction. Some part of the argument depends on accepting that the Book of Numbers is a highly contrived, elaborately balanced, literary composition according to the highest standards of writing of the period.

Numbers is an example of the so-called ring composition used by Hesiod in the Theogonies, as recently displayed by Richard Hamilton (1989). Theogonies is a work which has suffered criticism similar to that levelled against Numbers as to its unity and as to the authenticity of various passages. The structure of Homer is very comparable (Whitman 1958), and some of Pindar's odes (Greengard 1980). In this literary form the prologue announces the whole theme in brief, then follow discrete sections developing the theme, until a clear climax is reached at a midway point. The climax responds directly to the prologue and repeats some of



MARY DOUGLAS 417

the key words and deals with the problems raised there. After the climax, the story teller (or poet) takes the same route back to the beginning, each new section producing a new context for responding to the section to which it stands in apposition.5 The movement of return after the climax brings each section into parallel with its opposite in the first section. At the end the whole work has been led back to its beginning. The composition closes by delivering a response to the opening theme, resolving any remaining problems about what it may mean; hence the name of 'ring composition', though the structure is more like a musical melody than a ring. In responding to the beginning, the last section responds also to the climax, recalling the dilemmas resolved and the conflicts reconciled.6

This rhetorical form calls for great artistic control. It is subject to formal conventions and deploys self-referencing literary conceits. For the reader or lis- tener who tries to keep track of the ingeniously contrived lateral reading it gives intense pleasure. Curiosity is incited about how the poet is going to solve the technical problems. Admiration is roused for the inventive and often witty solu- tions. The acrostic form compels a salute to the skills which have achieved it all and yet contrived to conceal the art. The enjoyment is of the same order as the pleasure of a sonnet or play.

Numbers reveals itself to be a composition of this kind by its scheme of alternating sections,7 a story section alternating with a law section, thirteen sections in all, divided in the middle at the seventh section. The internal construction makes each of the story sections in the second half respond to issues raised in the corresponding story section in the first half. Even the story of Balaam is a ring with an internal structure of parallel rungs. It is opened and closed by the Lord's command, 'You shall say only the words I put into your mouth', given at the beginning and duly repeated by Balaam at the midpoint when he first meets the king, and again at the end. As to the ladder form of the internal structure, Balaam's three refusals to obey the angel on the path pair with the three blessings on Israel which the Lord brings out of his mouth, and these with the three prophecies against Israel's enemies with which he concludes.

A story within a story has certain distinguishing signs. First, the context is completely framed. It is a narrative interrupting the main text, a digression, often a recital by one of the characters or a framed-off scene in a picture. In the Iliad in Book 8, Achilles's shield made for him at his mother's request by the god, Hephaestes, is a metonymic image of this kind. Six scenes are engraved on it. The first presents two cities, one under siege by the other; the besieged warriors have rashly strayed outside the city walls and are about to be caught by their enemies, a picture of the plight of Troy besieged by the Greeks; the second is of cattle about to be attacked by a ferocious lion, against whom the herdsmen are helpless, an image of Achilles himself, and so on; the last scenes are idyllic images of pastoral life. In the Aeneid, the same literary device is presented for similar self-referencing purposes: Aeneas's shield made for him by Vulcan at his mother's request, in Book 8, has engraved on it a series of prophecies for the future history of Italy. In each of these cases the synecdochal device refers the reader to the central theme of the epic; it is no mere embellishment, but a strong reminder of the main purport of the poem.



418 MARY DOUGLAS

Identifying Balaam's story as a story within a story explains one of the curious points observed by commentators, that it is so firmly cut off from the main narrative. It is staged in a charmed world governed by the fairy-tale style of three-times-three: the messengers invite Balaam to go to Moab three times; the ass turns aside three times; Balaam strikes her three times; the king invites Balaam to curse three times (23: 1-10; 23: 13-24; 24: 2-9), and he blesses three times; his final prophecy has three parts (24: 15-24 ). These trifold repetitions alert us to a double insertion; first there is the book of Moses, then inside that, the story of Balaam, and inside that again, the story of the talking ass, a humble version of the noble steeds who warn or admonish their riders in ancient epics.

The story within the story can be recognised by being self-contained in its own virtual space and time, with its own dramatis personae. In the case of the pictures on the heroes' shields, there is no spatial or temporal continuity at all. In the case of Balaam, the temporal sequence of the history of the people of Israel is suspended while we engage with a new set of characters. The space covers a long mysterious journey to King Balak; further strange spatial effects are created (Mil- grom 1990: 469) by the change of scene on the journey and the changes of view that Balak arranges for Balaam from different mountain tops. Commentators who have tried to follow these geographic indications have been unsuccessful in locat- ing the places on the map.

The function of synecdoche is to contain the whole in a part. It is a distanced and condensed summary of the main theme. To know what the story of Balaam is doing in the Book of Numbers, we therefore need to know the main theme of the book. Or because the whole is in the part, the story of Balaam may be allowed to point for us the meaning of the book, and the book will tell us who is being satirized. The next step will be to read very carefully everything that God says, and particularly to study the words that he puts in Balaam's mouth.

Cursing and blessing

In the beginning of Numbers (chapters 1-4), the Lord tells Moses to count the people of Israel by tribes, but only to count those tribes which will bear arms. The Levites are called to serve around the tabernacle, and much later we learn that they are not heirs to the land (Num. 18: 20-21). The second census of the tribes is expressly for partitioning the land, and this time again the Levites are counted separately and the same reason given, that they will have no inheritance (26: 62). Though the prologue does not mention land rights, it is made clear that the Lord's promise of land for the descendants of Abraham is what the counting is about. Telling Moses how they are to stand on four sides of the tabernacle, the Lord describes a diagram that serves as a paradigm for the whole book. The book is about the promise. The first part of the message is that all the sons ofJacob are the heirs, except the Levites. Supporting this is the second message, that all the Lord's promises are fulfilled, all the prophecies made in his name have come true. It is well in line with the book's interest in prophecy that Balaam as the mouthpiece of the Lord repeats the old prophecies and utters some new ones.



MARY DOUGLAS 419

Consider in this context the conversations between the Lord and Balaam in Balaam's house. They suggest an explanation for why we, after reading the story, give Balaam a good character, while the contemporary readers of the same story gave him a bad character. We also need to explain why God seems to us to have acted capriciously with Balaam, telling him to go with the men and then being angry that he went with them. The first time that Balaam consulted the Lord, he was told:

Thou shalt not go with them, thou shalt not curse the people, for they are blest (22: 12).

This was clear enough and Balaam accordingly dismissed the messengers, saying that the Lord had refused to give him leave to go with them. Next time they came, pressing the invitation with promises of even greater reward, but without even consulting the Lord, Balaam answered them, no. But he immediately invited them to stay overnight so that he could consult the Lord again. And now the Lord gave him what seems to be an ambiguous answer: 'If the men ask you again, go with them, but you can say only the words which I shall say to you' (22: 20), literally: 'But the word/thing that I speak to you, you will do it' (David Goodman's translation). Balaam goes with them, and the Lord is angry. Evidently there is something that we are missing between the Lord's first refusal and his second, perhaps grudging, permission. This is where anthropology may have something helpful to say about blessings and curses.

Reporting back to the messengers of Balak, Balaam never told them that he had discovered that the people of Israel were blessed. If he had, they might have suspected that they were wasting their time and would not have stayed for the results of the consultation. That is, they would have known the dubiousness of proceeding to curse a people whom the Lord had blessed. Or perhaps, as they were only messengers, they might have taken the chance. But Balaam knew: either the people of Israel were available to be cursed, in which case Balaam could accept the fee and try to curse them, or they were blessed. A delicate theological point turns on Balaam's recognition of Israel's God. The unrecorded consultation would have had to take the form of asking the Lord whether they were really blessed, and whether the Lord might be persuaded to lift the blessing. The Lord would have declared again that they were really blessed. That would explain why he was angry with Balaam when in the end he did go with the men. Balaam's deceitfulness and love of gain would have been apparent to anyone who knew what a blessing meant.

We may think of a blessing as a hopeful form of words, an incantation which may or may not be efficacious. But in the region of Mesopotamia and Canaan a blessing meant calling on God for a protection which amounted to complete transformation of the blessed person's prospects. It was not like a coat of paint which could subsequently be scrubbed off or painted a different colour by some- one else. Any blessing that was accepted by the Lord was fixed, unless the Lord removed it and himself allowed a curse. A blessing had the solidity and projecti- bility of a covenant. Moreover, from the story of Esau and Jacob we know that it was a thing that could be stolen, and once uttered, it could not be altered (Gen: 27). Now, reflecting on the nature of blessing, we realise why the story of Balaam was pegged out on the story of the binding of Isaac. All the readers of Numbers would know that in Genesis the angel of the Lord blessed Abraham for his



420 MARY DOUGLAS

obedience in the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22: 15-18 ), and that the Lord blessed Isaac (Gen. 6: 2-5).

These reflections support the traditional interpretation that God could read Balaam's heart and knew that Balaam was secretly determined to get the fees for damaging Israel even if he could not curse her. If King Balak and his messengers did not know the supremacy of the one God, Balaam knew. If King Balak wanted to pit the power of Balaam's magic against God's blessing, Balaam knew that it could not be done. When he met King Balak he affirmed that he could speak only words that the Lord put into his mouth (22: 38). Outsiders to the tradition might construe this disclaimer as honesty on his part, but insiders would know that he said it because the Lord had put that into his mouth as well as everything else he was to say. When the Lord, on their second consultation (22: 20), said 'If the men come again, rise up and go with them, but you will only do the words which I shall say to you', it was not an injunction. It was less a command which Balaam had to obey than information: the Lord was just telling him what was going to happen. Because Israel was blessed, the journey would be fruitless both for King Balak's wish to damage Israel and for Balaam's wish for pecuniary reward. So his setting off with the men was a blatant act of deception.

This, I submit, settles the question of Balaam's moral worth. We should not have been surprised to read later that he went on trying to deliver Israel into the hands of Moab. Balaam was not only a comic figure but a wicked one as well. The mode of the pantomime villain becomes him better at every step. The string of famous blessings and prophecies that spouted from his mouth every time he opened it to curse would have evoked only merriment from the instructed public for whom Numbers was written. It is somewhat like the fun in the French and German fairy tales when a person with a spell cast on him has gold, or frogs, or a string of nonsense come out of his mouth. And now we know why his words came out in the form of divine poetry, more beautiful even than the rest of the Book of Moses, they were words of the Lord's own composing.

Jacob's blessings on his sons

The first thing Balaam says is, 'How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed? Or how shall I defy whom the Lord hath not defied?' (Num.23: 7-8). He goes on to quote Genesis where in Jacob's dream the Lord said:

I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shall spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north and to the south (Gen. 28: 13-14).

The version that comes out of Balaam's mouth repeats the reference to dust and indicates the four directions named in the text:

Who can count the dust of Jacob and the number of the fourth part of Israel! (Num. 23: 8-10).

When he has finished giving this first prophecy, King Balak complains that he hired Balaam to curse his enemies, not to bless them (Num. 23: 11).

Next time Balaam opens his mouth he utters an amalgam of Moses' blessing on Joseph and Jacob's deathbed blessings on Judah. He says:



MARY DOUGLAS 421

The Lord their God is with them, and the shout of a king is among them. God brings them out of Egypt; they have as it were, the horns of the wild ox. For there is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel; now it shall be said of Jacob and Israel, What has God wrought! Behold, a people! As a lioness it rises up and as a lion it lifts itself; it does not lie down till it devours the prey and drinks the blood of the slain (Num. 23: 22-24).

It is worth noting that the reference to 'horns of the wild ox' actually repeats Moses' own blessing on Joseph:

... prince among his brothers. His firstling bull has majesty, and his horns are the horns of a wild ox; with them he shall push the peoples, all of them, to the ends of the earth; such are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and such are the thousands of Manasseh (Deut. 33: 16-17).

Comparing Israel to a lion and to a lioness echoes Jacob: Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? (Gen. 49: 9).

The Moabite king now makes Balaam have a third try. Balaam lifts up his eyes and sees Israel camping, 'tribe by tribe', perhaps in the order which has been decreed in the beginning of Numbers. He says:

How fair are your tents, 0 Jacob, your encampments, 0 Israel! Like valleys that stretch afar, like gardens beside a river, like aloes that the Lord has planted, like cedar trees beside the waters. Water shall flow from his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, his kingdom higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. God brings him out of Egypt; and he has, as it were, the horns of the wild ox, he shall eat up the nations his adversaries, and shall break their bones in pieces, and pierce them through with arrows. He couched, he lay down like a lion, and like a lioness; who will rouse him up? Blessed be everyone who blesses you and cursed be everyone who curses you (Num. 24: 5-9).

Since both have now been repeated, we are safe in assuming there was nothing haphazard in the earlier mention of the lion and the wild ox. Balaam has also quoted two of the old blessings on Joseph, for the gardens and waters recall Jacob's blessing on him.8 The last blessing picks up the opening theme with which the story began, King Balak's wish to have Israel cursed. But ominously for King Balak, Balaam has repeated the Lord's very first words to Abraham:

And I will bless them that bless you, and curse him that curses you (Gen. 12: 3).

They are also the very same words which Isaac used to bless Jacob: Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you (Gen. 27: 29; and see Exodus 23:22).

King Balak at last gives up and dismisses Balaam angrily. Balaam delivers a parting oracle in which he roundly curses Moab, Edom, Amalek and the Kenites, and foretells the destruction of the Assyrian empire. He also gives a slightly altered version of Jacob's messianic prophecy, saying: A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel (Num. 24: 17). Remember that it is not Balaam who is saying these things, he is just the Lord's passive mouthpiece. The author is the Lord himself Beware of reading Balaam's prophecies without close attention to the originals. The first quick interpretation would be that Balaam has simply paraphrased the messianic prophecy to Judah which was:

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet (Gen. 49: 10).

But look, Balaam has not faithfully quoted Jacob word for word. Jacob had said the sceptre was forJudah, and he had reserved a different blessing forJoseph. Out of Balaam's mouth the Lord has said that the sceptre was in Israel, comprising



422 MARY DOUGLAS

both Joseph and Judah. Is this an accident? Has the editor been caught nodding? Did Balaam make a misquote? Dare we ask, did the Lord speaking through Balaam misremember or make a muddle? Jacob gave different blessings to Joseph andJudah, but Balaam amalgamated them and bestowed them on Israel. It is clear that in doing so he was not giving the blessing to the Northern Kingdom, under the head of 'Israel', for one of his rhetorical turns is always to name both Jacob and Israel, the one whenever he names the other. When Balaam uses the word Israel it is never in contrast with Judah; the names Jacob and Israel are put in apposition:

Come curse Jacob, come denounce Israel! (Num. 23: 7);

He has not beheld misfortune in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel (23: 21, 23);

How fair are your tents, 0 Jacob, your encampments, 0 Israel (24: 5).

In his vocabulary Jacob and Israel are one. In arguing that the blessing that falls from his mouth is a blessing for the whole of Jacob, that is, for the whole of Israel, we are following Williamson's chapter on the usage in Chronicles of the word 'Israel' (Williamson 1977). Note also that Balaam never mentions Judah at all, but always puts Israel and Jacob together.9

Interpreting these oracles an anthropologist is inclined to respect the integrity of the text. If the Lord, speaking through Balaam, misquoted Jacob's blessing, we should give him the benefit of the doubt: he did not make a slip. Nor was the editor careless. In case the reader is bemused about the value of Balaam's sayings, he has been given the great saying:

God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and shall he not do it? (Num. 23: 19).

This puts the story squarely back into the theme of Numbers. The ancient prophecies have come true and God's promises have been kept. Those promises whose time for fulfilment has not yet come will be fulfilled. Cursing the Canaa- nites, Balaam revives the curses in Genesis against Noah's progeny, and especially the curse against Canaan, the child of Ham (Gen. 10). Balaam's prophecy of the doom of Moab (24: 17) is fully in line with the enmity to Moab shown in the rest of Numbers. Within the scope of the book both were true prophecies. Canaan had been routed. Moab shortly was to lose its allies, 'five Midian kings and their armies destroyed (Num. 31: 8), in the battle in which Balaam was killed. So why did Balaam amalgamate the blessings on Judah and Joseph?

Problems of the post-exilic community Anthropologists tend to assume that the time horizons deployed in a theological treatise include the immediate political scene. Eternity is the time scale that makes it theology. The cosmogony starts with the origins of the universe, explains and weighs all human action on the scale of the eternal laws. In between eternity and the beginning there is the present. A theology is always political. What else would provoke the writing of a theological treatise but an overwhelm- ing sense of present wrong and possible right? The political scene will give us the context of Numbers.



MARY DOUGLAS 423

The book is about the promise and the inheritance of land. If we take the early post-exilic period as the time of redaction, there was an acute problem about land rights. The returned exiles from Babylon wanted their land back, but the people who had been cultivating it, and passing it down in inheritance for over fifty years, would not want to be evicted. That problem alone was enough to destroy a small community. Then there were problems of foreign policy. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah provide a confusing source of documentation for the early post-exilic period. Such is the difficulty of co-ordinating the events purporting to be the same in the two books that it has even been suggested 'that Ezra never existed, his person is the ad hoc creation of the redactors of the two books, the Chronicler or whoever, who sought in this way to legitimate their own theory of what must have been the composition, the organisation and the faith of the new community of the restoration' (Soggin 1985: 276, quoting C.C. Torrey's theory of 1910). However, having introduced this thought, Soggin goes on to add that the arguments in support of such a radical theory are not conclusive. But on one point the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are convincing: that a state of mutual espionage was maintained between the different Persian provinces. As colonial administrators Nehemiah and Ezra felt, probably with reason, that they were victims of conspiracy. Moab, Edom and Samaria were the three dangerous neighbours for foreign policy to beware. Moab was the powerful Persian province on Judah's eastern border. Edom, later called Idumea, was a rival province on the southern border, claiming common descent from Abraham's father. Most threatening neighbour of all was Samaria, the remnant of the old Northern Kingdom, richer, more populous, and politically better placed. Samaria was now a separate Persian province, and until very recently, had been the Persian province within which Judah was included.

'The Northerners and the Samaritans under Sanballat had more power in Palestine during the entire Persian period than the Jews in Jerusalem, simply because the Lieutenant Governor rules from Shechem. The remainder of the House ofJoseph, along with the opponents ofJerusalem, and the ones excluded during the life time of Ezra, outnumbered the Jews ofJerusalem even up till the time of the Greeks' (Bowman 1975). It is not surprising that the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah express deep anxiety about conspiracies against Israel fomented by Sanballat, the governor of Samaria. In trying to curtail his ambitions the governor of Judah would have wanted to stress the authenticity of the religion of his province, and the false claims of other groups of alleged 'Jews'. In this way the land problem and the foreign relations problem become enmeshed with religion when the leaders of the Samarian community inJudah claimed a right to help the rebuilding of the temple.

Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esar-Haddon, King of Assyria, who brought us here (Ezra 4: 2).

Who but the sons of Joseph would worship the God of Israel? The provincial administrator vehemently rejected their offer, insisting that 'we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us' (Ezra 4: 1-3). He had been empowered by the Persian king to appoint magistrates and judges, with authority for life and death, banishment, imprison- ment or confiscation of property. These powers were to be used against anyone



424 MARY DOUGLAS

who 'will not obey the law of your God?' (Ezra 7: 25-28). But who was going to decide what the law of God required? It would have been in order for Ezra to refer these religious claims to the Chief Priest, but he based his decision on the authority of the King of Persia, and thereafter he preached, instituted religious festivals and declaimed the law of God on his own authority.

The governor held that his outright rejection of the request of the Samarian community was the beginning of conspiracies against the government by the 'people of the land' (Ezra 4: 4-5). As the story unfolds, we are left to infer that the party of the Babylonian returners were the only adherents to the true faith. When Ezra and Nehemiah referred to 'all the congregation of Israel' or 'the people of Israel' the category were the descendants of Jacob, not even all of Judah, but those from Judah who had come back from exile, 'the children of the captivity' (Ezra 7: 16, 19-21; 10:16). He further implied that everyone who had not been in exile was suspected of idolatry, and made the test of idolatry their obedience to his decree that any of the congregation of Israel married to a foreigner should reject their wives and offspring. If they refused, they would forfeit all that they possessed (Ezra 9: 10-15; 10: 7-8). Foreign wives would have been from families of the political opposition, the people of the land, including the immigrant people of Samaria.

The question for our interpreting the politics of the day was partly whether there existed a sizable Ephraimite community in Judah at that time, and whether the community that offered to share in rebuilding the temple were Samarians. As to its size, Coggins (1989) warns us against believing the exaggerated accounts of population displacements caused by Assyrian and other conquerors' resettlement policies. On the other hand, Cogan (1988) argues from Nehemiah (Neh. 13: 28) that there would certainly have been in Jerusalem a Jewish community tllat admitted Samarians to their society and allowed their sons to marry Samarian women. And we should be prepared to find that they would disagree about the government policy against them.

The political dealings of the post-exilic community with Samaria were soured not only by Samaria's stronger position in relation to the Persian authorities, but also by the historic rivalry between the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms. In the sixth to fifth centuries, Judah considered Samaria given over to idolatry. Samaria considered that she was faithful to the old forms of worship, apparently with some justice, according to John Bowman, who describes Samaria as 'This much insulted and frequently misunderstood community' (Bowman 1975). Eventually Samaria, the territory of the Ephraimites and the tribe of Manasseh, repeatedly rejected by the returners in the second temple period, struck out on her own and instituted her own temple (Talmon 1986: 165-201). In all but one aspect of theology the Samarians were orthodox: monotheistic, aniconic, circum- cising and Sabbath observing (Coggins 1975: 132-6). This one aspect, which roused so much hostility, was in itself due to the rivalry between the two cultic centres, Judah in Jerusalem, and Samaria in Gerizim. To add to the religious and political tension, immigrants from other parts of the region had been settled in Samaria following the colonial policy of transferring the populations of con- quered regions, so the population was ethnically mixed.



MARY DOUGLAS 425

To solve the land problem, two policies were mooted. One policy was simply to reappropriate the land, without compensation. This was the solution of Ezra. The priestly policy is written in Leviticus 25, on the law of the Jubilee. This solution was based on the ancient rule that anyone who had bought land when the owner was in financial distress should allow the kin or descendants of the seller to redeem it. The priestly solution required compensation to those who had been farming the land. Taken separately, the interpretations offered here of the policies of Ezra and Nehemiah on the one hand, and of the priestly editors of Leviticus and Numbers on the other, are probably uncontroversial. The novelty in this interpretation is the idea that the priestly books writing about land had reference to a current problem about land holding. But the anthropological interpretation of a theological statement always seeks its contemporary political context.10

Taken at face value, Ezra and Nehemiah were good men, ardent in their defence of religion. But taken as politicians, they appear to be primarily concerned to keep a good name with their Persian overlords and keep Samaria, Ammon and Moab at a distance. They also had to deal with the land problem, their own supporters pressing for redistribution. Skilfully combining accusations of defilement with an exclusionary foreign policy, Ezra solved the land problem in favour of the returned exiles by dispossessing his political opponents, without compensation. The government party had their own priestly supporters regis- tered as full descendants from the line of Levi, but there were other priests who had stayed behind and who were not being consulted. The Chronicler disagreed with their isolationist policy (Stern 1976). It is unlikely that all the priests would have been of one mind about welcoming the returners or accepting their claims to be the unique exponents of the faith, or about defining the boundary of the congregation. As to the proper relation between Judah and the descendants of Joseph, Ezekiel's oracles are evidence that the views of the government were contested. The alleged adversaries ofJudah, the people of the land, were neighbours, allied by marriage to the rest of the congregation, old friends. There was also a matter of doctrine. Samarian traditions maintained that Ezra had changed both the script and the content of the Torah (Encyclopedia Judaica). There was plenty of cause for priestly opposition to the government. Some priests could have foreseen that conflict with Samaria would be bad foreign policy.

Balaam as political satire

The path is cleared for reading Balaam's story as a political satire. Each of the three main protagonists of the story may be seen as a player in the political scene in post-exilic Judah. Balaam is a brilliant pastiche of a colonial governor, flourish- ing his big stick, beating up the people, making threats of worse violence (if only he had a sword). The name Balaam can be read to suggest 'Lord of the people', a pun on names for which Bible readers should be prepared (Garsiel 1991). Nehemiah could be the model, but Ezra or any administrator would fit who used the backing of Persia to impose his party's policy. King Balak, whose name means 'destruction', would be a distant, idolatrous ruler, say Nebuchadnezzar or king of



426 MARY DOUGLAS

Persia, ignorant of the Lord's power to bless. The story within the story works very well as a political parody, emanating from a priestly faction opposed to government exclusionary policies.

If Balaam is an anti-government satire, Numbers would have had an anti- government political programme. Although Numbers has clothed its message in the antique garments and literary conventions of a pastoral idyll, seeming to be above and beyond politics, it has gone to great lengths to count all the sons of Jacob, naming and numbering tribes which had ceased to exist for centuries, ever since the time of Solomon. Why would Moses' repeated censuses of heirs to the land be so important at the time of editing? The only tribes remaining to the day of editing were Judah, Ephraim and the remnant of Benjamin, but the land issue affected them very closely.

'The land' has a straight concrete meaning: 'the land' which the Lord promised to the descendants of Abraham, of which the idolatrous Canaanites were to be dispossessed. Within that meaning there is the sense of the whole land, that is to say the territory of Israel, and there is also the other sense of the territory of each tribe. And then there is the even more local sense that comprises house plots, vineyards, pastures, to which each household would make a claim. Finally, there is the eschatological meaning, the land of the promise, a sense transcending demarcated territorial rights. It is hard to say which would be the sense used in the last chapter of Numbers when Moses says to the men of Manasseh: 'everyone of the people of Israel shall keep to himself the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers' (Num. 36: 7), which he repeats three times more in the next two verses. In the literary conventions which applied to ring composition, the central theme of the work is found in the first part, the prologue, and picked out again for repeating at the end. On this convention, the important theme of Numbers is the land, the promise, or the inheritance, and for this purpose Numbers counts all the tribes and says they are all the heirs. So far from excluding Ephraim, Moses will train Joshua, an Ephraimite and hero of the revolts in the desert, to succeed himself. The last few lines of Numbers on the rights to the land, just quoted, were Moses' words to the 'sons ofJoseph'.

The policy of the government would have had populist support; declaring the immigrants and people of the land idolators and taking their land would have had support from the land-hungry returners. But Numbers is concerned with the theological issue of how to define the boundaries of God's promise. When the governor in the second temple period takes it on himself to define the congregation of Israel, he encroaches on the priestly prerogative.

It would not have been difficult for anyone involved in those political con- troversies to interpret Balaam and Balak as parodies of the governor and the emperor. Sheer pantomime: the demon king struts round his domain, fussily shifting the site of the curse, muttering his absurd complaint: 'I hired you to curse and you do nothing but bless': the wicked magician, ever so humble, says over and over that he could speak only what God told him to speak, as if he had any volition in the matter at all. Each destroys the other: King Balak loses his allies and treasure to the enemies he tried to have cursed; Balaam, who had wanted to use a sword on the ass dies by the sword (Num. 27: 8), no death for a professional holy man.



MARY DOUGLAS 427

We are ready to complete the inverted parallel with Abraham. Who could the patient she-ass be? Who was the beast of burden with the gift of speech, the humble creature made into a type for Isaac, the animal whom the Lord wanted to save? She would be none other than the people of Israel, so often referred to as a woman by the prophets, Israel who was exalted by the words of Balaam's prophecies. She was forced into the wrong path against her will, she was beaten by her master, she recognised the angel of the Lord and tried to obey. This would be why Balaam is presented riding on a she-ass.

The theological doctrine at issue was whether all the sons of Jacob should inherit the land. The sense of 'land' in Numbers is the eschatological 'land'. This would include the rights of the sons ofJacob to be treated as heirs of the promise. Sharing the promise they would share the land. The Lord declares in Leviticus, 'The land is mine' (Lev. 25: 23), just as the people of Israel are his, whom he brought out of the land of Egypt (Lev. 25: 42). It would be in defence of this doctrine that God, speaking through Balaam, changed the words ofJacob's blessing so that the separate promises to Judah and to Joseph should be combined as one great destiny for all the people of Israel.

NOTES

This article elaborates a chapter of my forthcoming study of the Book of Numbers: In the wilderness, Sheffield: Academic Press, 1993. It may be novel to interpret a biblical text by trying to locate its historical context, but that is common anthropological practice for studying any texts at all, and I would go so far as to claim that it is the only distinctively anthropological approach to the Bible. Two models have been in my mind while I made the attempt. One is Bernadette Bucher, whose methods of studying the illustrations of a seventeenth-century text have inspired many distinguished exemplars, especially in South American regional studies. The other is the late Yvonne Verdier. Her presentation of the family and village context of the Mother Goose stories radically transforms current standards of folkloric interpretation, requiring Grimm's tales now to be read as commentanes on the generational antagonisms and solidarities of the women reciting them (Verdier 1979). I have also been much encouraged by the studies of Indonesian legends, their rhetorical structure and political context, carried out in Australian anthropology depart- ments, particularly by James Fox and Douglas Lewis.

Since I started studying the Book of Numbers six years ago, so many Bible scholars have helped me that it is impossible to acknowledge them all. I also fear that many will find this exer- cise too speculative, since so little is known about the second temple community in Jerusalem. I regret that the essay, in spite of their efforts, still contains errors and infelicities. Jacob Milgrom, the great 'Numbers man', has been unsparing in his care at all stages, and I cannot thank him enough, and regret that I have not always been a faithful disciple. Richard Coggins actually invited me to try out this reading of Balaam's story on his classroom in King's College, and criticized the text from his knowledge of the post-exilic literature, for which I am extremely grateful. I also thank Graham Auld and John Sawyer for talking to me about the post-exilic community, Jacob Neusner for early advice, and Mark Geller and David Goodman for reading the text of the original Huxley Memorial Lecture. In addition to Bible scholars, Ruth Finnegan and Josep Llobera were invaluable on anthropological interpretations of mythology. Arthur Hatto was characteristically generous with his comments on epic structure, and Wendy Doniger on the mythological background to talking horses. I owe special thanks to Robert Littman, Lin Fox Hall and Conrad Leser on synecdoche in Greek and Latin classics, and to Rodney Needham and Milena Dolezolova for guidance on archaic literary forms.

I am grateful to the Royal Anthropological Institute for inviting me to present this essay under the auspices of the Huxley Memorial Lecture.

1 Milgrom's commentary argues from the discontinuities in space that the ass episode (see below) represents a folk tale interpolated into the story of Balaam. He goes on to say: the



428 MARY DOUGLAS

question is, why was it inserted here? He follows early rabbinic interpretation to the effect that the ass's part is to travesty Balaam, the seer who is not so clever as an ass. The ass, 'beholding divine visions with eyes unveiled', is to Balaam as Balaam is to Balak (Milgrom 1990: 469)

2 Philip Budd summarizes the elements that might represent a Yahwist strand intertwined with an Elohist strand; the ass part of the story is obviously Yahwist, an accretion to the earlier version (Budd 1984: 263-4).

3 'La tradition juive...depuis les Targums palestiniens, jusqu'aux ecrits rabbiniques de la mish- nah et du torah en passant par Philon et Josephe: Balaam accepte l'invitation de Balaq par cupidite et vanite: il veut maudir par plaisir, aveugle par passion, il ne comprend pas l'interdiction divine. Ni le miracle de l'anesse, ni la vision de l'ange ne lui ouvrent l'esprit; il ne benit que par contrainte et trouvera sa revanche dans les mauvais conseils donnes aux Madianites. Personnifica- tion de la cupidite, de l'orgueil, de la haine et de la ruse, il est l'ennemi jure d'Israel, le Mauvais par excellence.. .avec la seule exception de Pseudo Philon' (de Vaulx 1972: 263).

Note also the harsh comments ofJewish and Christian writers on Balaam:

Then Balak the son of Zippur, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel; and he sent and invited Balaam the son of Beor to curse you, but I would not listen to Balaam; therefore he blessed you; so I delivered you out of his hand Joshua 24: 9-10).

They hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia to curse you. Nevertheless, the Lord your God would not harken to Balaam; but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you (Deut. 23: 1-5).

They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrong doing, but was rebuked for hls own transgression; a dumb ass spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness (2 Peter 2: 14-15).

Woe to them! For they walk in the way of Cain, and abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error, and perish in Korah's rebellion Jude: 11).

Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, that they might eat food sacnficed to idols and practise immorality (Rev. 2: 11). 4 For the most sustained contempt of the redactors, see Noth 1968. See also Wenham's list of

scholars' complaints about the book's unity and coherence (1981: 184 sqq.). 5A text analysed in detail that shows this form is Hesiod's Theogony, in Hamilton (1989: 24

sqq.). 6 Numbers not only exemplifies all these features but this reading justifies even its much dis-

puted ending, which, instead of being a digression, closes the circle by a return to the beginning and to the key words about the fathers' houses. The beginning of Numbers, 1-4, has the counting of the twelve tribes by their fathers' houses, the separate count of the Levites, and the dangers of encroaching on the tabernacle. The midpoint is about the dangers of encroaching (Num. 16 and 17), ending with 'Whoever shall encroach on the tabernacle of the Lord shall die, shall we be consumed with dying?' (17: 13), which echoes the words of the beginning (4: 19- 20). The last chapter returns to the theme of the inheritance of the fathers' houses (36: 8-9).

7I am grateful to Professor A. Hatto for commenting that 'prosimetrum', 'the alternation of narrative and lyncal, of recitative and melodic, or simply of disjunct metres, positively for height- ened expression, or negatively to relieve monotony, is now at the forefront of epic studies.. .a phenomenon widespread in Central Asia and in Africa. Arthur Waley met it in the Tales from Tun-Huang, but it is assumed to be far older' (personal communication.)

Other examples of the alternation of styles are given in Hatto (1989), Biebuyck (1969) - in The Muindo epic, where epic is presented in alternating prose and verse - and John Smith (1989) on Rajasthani epic tradition in which singing alternates with declamation. Alternating voices are also recognisable in other parts of the Bible: two voices chant in The Song of Songs; the speech of the Lord alternates dialogue with that of his prophet in Jeremiah. Karl Reichl is the leading authority on prosimetrum (Reichl 1992).

8 '[A] fruitful bough by a spring, whose branches run over the wall' (Gen. 49: 22), The echo ofJacob's blessing in Balaam is brought out by Burrows (1938).

9 This contrasts with the usage of Zechariah who prayed for a joint tnumph to include both Judah andJoseph, but always distinguished them:

You were a curse among the nations, 0 house of Judah, and house of Israel (Zec. 8: 133).



MARY DOUGLAS 429

The brotherhood between Judah and Israel (Zec. 11: 14).

And I will cut off the chanot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem (Zec. 9: 10).

When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim (Zec. 9: 13).

And I will strengthen the house of Judah and I will save the house of Joseph (Zec. 10: 6). Zechariah's political philosophy was universalist: he looked forward to the day when all the

nations that came against Jerusalem 'would even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles' (Zec. 14: 16).

10 This, it could be argued, is closer to Stanley Fish's proposal that interpretation must always refer to an interpretive community. A scintillating paper by David Clines on Nehemiah pur- ports to disembed the autobiographical memoir of Nehemiah embedded in the Book of Nehe- miah. Quoting Fish, and quoting Christopher Hill approvingly for saying that the purpose of making a public record is to persuade, Clines does not consider any opinion of which the Nehe- miah author might want to persuade his readers (Clines 1991).

REFERENCES

Babcock, B. 1977. The story in the story: metanarration in folk narrative. In Verbal art as performance (ed.) R. Bauman. Rowley, MA.

Biebuyck, D. 1969. The Mwindo epic. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Budd, P. 1984. Numbers. World Biblical Commentary. Bowman, J. 1975. The Samaritan problem: studies in the relationship of Samaritanism, Judaism, and early

Christianity (Pittsb. Theol. Monogr. 1). Pittsburgh: Univ. Press. Burrows, E. 1938. The oracles ofJacob and Balaam. London: Burns Oates & Washboume. Chandler,J. 1891. Balaam and his master. Boston. Clines, D. 1991. Nehemiah: the perils of autobiography, What does Eve do to help?JSOT 94, 124-64. Cogan, M. 1988. 'For we like you, worship your God': three Biblical portrayals of Samaritan origins.

Vetus Testamentum 38, 286-92. Coggins, R.J. 1975. Samaritans andJews: the origins of Samaritanism reconsidered. Oxford: Blackwell.

1989. The origins of the Jewish Diaspora. In The world of ancient Israel (ed.) R. Clements. Cambridge: Univ. Press.

Cox, S. 1884. Balaam, an exposition and story. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. de Vaulx, J. 1972. Les nombres. Gabalda. Encyclopedia Judaica, 'Samaria', quoting the second Samaritan Chronicle, pp. 729-30. Eissfeldt, 0. 1965. The Old Testament: an introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Finnegan, R. 1992. Oral traditions and the verbal arts: a guide to research practices. London: Routledge. Garsiel, M. 1991. Puns upon names as a literary device in 1 Kings: 1-2. Biblica 72, 379-86. Greengard, C. 1980. The structure of Pindar's epinician odes. Amsterdam: Hakkert. Hackett, J. 1984. The Balaam textfrom Deir 'Alla (Harv. Semit. Monogrs. 31). Cambndge, MA:

Harvard Univ. Press. Hamilton, R. 1989. The architecture of Hesiodic poetry. (AJ.P. Monogrs. Class. Philol.) Johns Hopkins

Univ. Press. Hatto, A. (ed.) 1989. Tradition in heroic and epic poetry, 2, Characteristics and techniques. London:

Humanities Research Association. Milgrom, J. 1990. Numbers: the JPS commentary. Excursus 58, 469-71. Noth, M. 1968 (translation). Numbers: a commentary. London: SCM Press. Pepin, J. 1976. Myth et allegories: les origines grecques et les contestationsJudeo-chretiennes, part 2, revised

edition, original 1958. Etud. Augustin. 222-3. Reichl, K. 1992. Turkic oral poetry: traditions. forms, poetic structure. In A.B. Lord: Studies in oral

tradition 7. Garland Ref Libr./Hums., 1247. New York: Garland. Rofe, A. 1979. The Book of Balaam. Jerusalem (Hebrew), cited in Safran: 10-30. Safran, J.D. 1988. Balaam and Abraham. Vetus Testamentum 37, 106-10. Smith,J.D. 1989. Rajasthan, how to sing a tale: epic performance in the Pabuji tradition. In Tradition

in heroic and epic poetry, vol. 2, (ed.) A. Hatto. London: Humanities Research Association. Soggin,J.A. 1985. A history of Israel,from the beginnings to the Bar Kochba revolt AD 135. London: SCM

Press.



430 MARY DOUGLAS

Stem, M. 1976. The period of the Second Temple. In A history of theJewish people (ed.) B. Sasson. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Talmon, S. 1986. The emergence ofJewish sectarianism in the early Second Temple period. In King, cult and calendar in ancient Israel. Jerusalem: Magnus Press.

Verdier, Y. 1979. Fa(ons de dire,fafons defaire: la laveuse, la couturiere, la cuisiniere. Pans : Gallimard. Wenham, G. 1981. Numabers (The Tyndale Old Testament commentaries). London: Inter-Varsity

Press. Whitman, C.H. 1958. Homer and the Homeric tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press; Oxford:

Univ. Press. Williamson, H.G.M. 1977. Israel in the Books of Chronicles. Cambridge: Univ. Press.

Proposition theorique au sujet de l'inclusion de Balaam dans le Livre des Nombres

Resume Les suggestions visant a expliquer la position du recit de Balaam dans Le Livre des Nombres ne manquent pas. Elles vont de la simple le,on de morale adressee aux ennemis d'Israel, 'a 'hypothese d'un artifice litteraire qui, par un effet de miroir, donnerait une image inversee d'Abraham et de l'obligation d'Isaac, sans compter les doutes quant a l'appartenance de ce texte au Livre des Nombres. Et pourtant, pas une seule de ces propositions n'offre de mettre en rapport le recit avec le contexte politique dans lequel la redaction du Pentateuque fut achevee, au cinquieme siecle avant 1'ere chretienne. L'article offre une interpretation basee sur deux traditions anthropologiques: celle pour qui un texte doit toujours etre replace dans son contexte historique, et celle qui demande que les formes litteraires et les conventions textuelles solent examinees. Une telle approche permet de demontrer que le recit de Balaam prend, au niveau du style, la forme d'un texte dans le texte, et que, comme on pouvait le prevoir, il contient sous forme resumee et metonymique le message de 1'histoire dans laquelle il s'inscrit. Des que l'on prend en consideration la periode historique qui suivit 1'exode, on s'apervoit que Balaam est en fait un pamphlet satirique dirigee contre le gouverneur de Juda, qui ridiculise les pretentions de ce dernier A accorder ses ben6dictions et maledictions commne s'il avait requ de Dieu ce pouvoir divin.

22 Hillway, London, N6 6QA, U.K.



Documents

Balaam's Place in the Book of Numbers - Swarthmore College