A Time To Grow!
Revisiting God's Blessing to Abraham in Balak
“I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will make you exceedingly numerous (arbeh otcha).” (Genesis 17:2)
Moab was alarmed because that people was so numerous (rav)…Balak son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at that time, sent messengers to Balaam son of Beor…saying, “There is a people that came out of Egypt; it hides the earth from view, and it is settled next to me. Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too numerous for me (atzum mimenni)” (Numbers 22:3-5)
And [the King of Egypt] said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us (rav v’atzum mimennu). (Exodus 1:9)
But the other men who had gone up with [Caleb] said, “We cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we (Chazak mimennu).” (Numbers 13:31)
Rabbi Ḥanina bar Pappa says: When they said: “They are stronger,” do not read the phrase as: Stronger than us [mimmennu], but rather read it as: Stronger than God [mimmennu], meaning that even the Homeowner, God, is unable to remove His belongings from there, as it were. (Talmud Sota 35a)
The Israelites are described multiple times by their enemies as “rav v’atzum” (numerous and mighty). The first time the people are so described is at the beginning of the book of Exodus. The people have grown from a familial clan to a proto-nation. They have “scaled.” After telling us that the people multiplied and strengthened (vayirbu v’atzmu), the Torah continues by telling us that the King of Egypt notices this and makes the same observation. Only this time, he editorializes by adding the word “mimennu” (for us). The ruler adds an element of fear to what might otherwise be a neutral or even positive description of population growth.
The King of Egypt, who has forgotten Joseph, has forgotten the positive elements of the history of Israelite-Egyptian relations, has done so because the Israelite population has grown. Are his demographic fears warranted? Are the people a threat to the stability of Egyptian culture and sovereignty? The fear-mongering becomes the basis for enslaving the Israelites, giving them tough labor, and enforcing a genocidal policy towards newborn Israelite boys. But is it just propaganda, or are the people, in fact, too numerous?
After the Israelites leave Egypt and are making their way to Canaan, the Moabites likewise perceive the people as numerous. History rhymes, and so the King of Moab, in this week’s parasha, Balak, seizes on the demographic threat as the basis for his war against the Israelites. This time, he turns not to slave labor and genocide but to a single superpower, Balaam, to contain the (perceived) threat. Balaam is to curse the people. Do the Israelites, in fact, cover the whole earth, or is the Torah giving us the perspective of someone whose panic colors his perception? How are we to delineate the difference between a fact and a value?
Recall that this very challenge—between perception and evaluation—lay at the crux of the story of the “sin of the spies,” in which the Israelite spies looked upon Canaan and were fearful of their capacity to conquer it. The same word that both the Egyptians and the Moabites use to describe their relationship to the Israelites is used by the Israelite spies to describe their own relationship to the Canaanites: mimennu. For us. Relative to us. Mimennu is the word that signals we are in the category of comparison, subjectivity, attitude, orientation, not neutral, disinterested, objective observation of the data. And in all three cases the perceivers are in the wrong, it would seem.
What makes them wrong? A Talmudic passage from Sotah, quoted above, offers us a possibility. The fear is connected to faithlessness; the perceivers make a leap that is reasonable in a world without God and stupid in a world in which God exists. The people don’t think the Canaanites are too strong for them, but too strong for God. The great temptation for the ancients was not atheism or naturalism, but something like disloyalty to God (embodied in idolatry). Thus, the error made by all three nations, Israel, Egypt, and Moab, is in considering the facts of the case without appreciating God’s loyalty to Israel and Israel’s loyalty to God. The doubting of a sacred relationship proves to be their downfall. Doubt is endemic to the human condition, and some of it is virtuous, but misplaced self-doubt leads to a dark place.
The Egyptians should not have feared Israel, because they should have seen them as a good and holy nation; likewise, the Moabites should not have been afraid. And likewise, the Israelites should not have feared for themselves. You might say, “How could the Egyptians or Moabites have known better?” But the answer is that the Exodus story was a lesson for the whole world. Jethro, who was a Midianite, observed it, and became sympathetic to the Israelite cause. The Egyptian King forgot Joseph, which is to say, he forgot the divine element connected to the guest people in his land. Once God is removed from the picture, the Israelites are just a people, just a military, just a demographic threat; and war is just war, geopolitics geopolitics. At least within the Biblical frame, the leap from numerous to too numerous for us is wrong. We don’t get to pass that kind of judgment, for we are not God.
To appreciate just how deeply the point goes recall that God’s blessing to Abraham includes the promise that his descendants will become numerous. In one sense, the fulfillment of that promise is ironically and tragically expressed in the reaction to it. Where Abraham might look upon his legacy and see a blessing, Egypt and Moab see it as a threat, something to be stamped out or cursed. (Balaam’s inability to curse the people, and his forced blessing, in spite of himself, affirm the incontrovertible promise God makes to Abraham in Genesis.)
But in another sense, the Moabites and Egyptians miss the message of God’s promise to Abraham. God tells Abraham that all the families of the world will be blessed through him. And God doesn’t define a descendant in strictly biological terms. Abraham has the potential to be a father to all who embrace the message of ethical monotheism, even those who convert or simply share his moral sympathies. Many Midrashim attest to Abraham and Sarah as teachers and exemplary practitioners of hachnasat orchim, hospitality—before they have Isaac. These are people who welcome all into their tent. Those who look upon the Israelites and see mimennu —too numerous relative to us—miss the point; they could be part of the meaning of the Exodus, too. But it would have to start by renouncing the political model of Egyptian despotism and its concomitant worldview in which the lower classes are dispensable and the rulers are deified. Note that the strong reactions to the power of Israel come from Kings; that is because a core teaching of monotheism is that the King is not God. The surprising victories of Israel over nations stronger than them is a symbolic threat to those for whom power is an end in itself, those for whom might makes right, those for whom God is incarnate in the leader (and absent from anyone else), those who engage in self-worship rather than witness transcendence.
The Egyptian and Moabite perceptions of the Israelites are ironic, but unsurprising, a classic case of spotlight effect. Everyone is fearful of Israel’s might, but the meaning of Israel’s numbers is mainly theological—an expression of blessing; an expression of the success of Abraham’s and Sarah’s ability to move from a team of two to a culture in the hundreds of thousands. Most ironic is that the spies do not appreciate their own success—just as the Israelites have become fearsome to everyone else, the spies consider themselves “grasshoppers in their eyes, and in our own.”
When the spies come to the land of Canaan they see giants. They rightly consider the inhabitants chazak, strong, a word that should be familiar to us from the Haggadah, in which we repeat many times how God brought the people out of Egypt with a strong hand (b’chozek yad). The Torah contrasts the numbers of Abraham with the strength of armies. The blessing to Abraham is not you will be strong, but you will be numerous. You will multiply.
The emphasis of the blessing is not simply on a demographic achievement (which, let’s face it, is not quite accurate if we measure the population of world Jewry against that of the global population, but is accurate if we include Christians and Muslims and those who live “under the influence” of Noahide law). Rather, the point of the blessing is this: Don’t measure your success by what’s in front of your eyes, but see the potential in the present moment. Look several generations ahead. Don’t accept as right what is popular today. Be numerous. Compound. Start with a small thing and believe in its ability to grow. By the time we meet the Israelites in Numbers this is the positive lesson everyone should see and celebrate. Wow, unbelievable. Abraham and Sarah succeeded. Instead, the fear is that growth means instability for the status quo. Don’t measure strength today. Look for opportunity on the horizon. Netflix may not have been as strong as Blockbuster in the early days, but it had the potential to become more numerous. The response of Egypt and Moab to Israel is characteristic of incumbents. They were right to be territorial to the extent that they didn’t want to change. But they were morally wrong to want to remain static. And where are those once great civilizations now?
The blessing of Israel is a blessing not just for its future, but for futurity itself. Blessings and promises look beyond what is to what might be. Enemies of the future who seek to freeze time or turn back the clock, also seek to turn blessings into curses, but no amount of strength, even the strength of giants, can hold back the forces of growth and hope. What are 210 years of slavery (commuted from 400), or 40 years in a desert, when compared with the long arc from God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17 to now? As Kleist wrote in his notebook, “To you reading this a thousand years from now, to your spirit, I bow.” Multiply that number exponentially and you can begin to appreciate the meaning of numerous, rav, in God’s initial pledge.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins @ Etz Hasadeh
P.S.— Happy to share my latest conversation with Bill Kristol for Meditations with Zohar. Please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts if you enjoy it and help us grow:)