The following source sheet was created for Temple Micah, Washington, D.C.
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Then the Eternal opened the donkey’s mouth, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times?”
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Numbers 22:28
Bamidbar Rabbah 20:12
“Then the Eternal opened the donkey’s mouth”—in order to
teach Balaam that the mouth and the tongue are in God’s power; that if Balaam
sought to curse the Israelites, his mouth was in God’s power.
Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel
The opposition between God and the sorcerer is the
opposition between the Deity and mortal wisdom. In the story of Balaam, we see
these two domains. On the one side, the power of Balaam: enchantments,
divinations, and altars—the sorcerer’s belief in his own human powers. On the
other, the Deity and the Deity’s message (463).
[Wizardry is] a science of omens by means of which a human
can foretell the future in magic. Wizardry is anathema to the religion of
Israel because its purpose is to reveal the secrets of God in an ungodly way.
The wizard consults the dead, idols, oracles, his rod, his cup, arrows, the
liver, and heavenly omens in order to foretell the future. It is a form of self-pride,
self-confidence, and an ambition to be like the gods (497).
Abraham Joshua Heschel,
The Prophets
An analysis of prophetic utterances shows that the
fundamental experience of the prophet is a fellowship with the feelings of God,
a sympathy with the divine pathos. It
is not, like love, an attraction to the divine Being, but the assimilation of
the prophet’s emotional life to the divine (Volume I, p. 26).
The God of the philosophers is unknown and indifferent to
man; God thinks, but does not speak; God is conscious of God’s self, but
oblivious to the world; while the God of Israel is a God Who loves, a God Who
is known to, and concerned with, man. God not only rules the world in the
majesty of God’s might and wisdom, but reacts intimately to the events of
history. God does not judge men’s deeds impassively and with aloofness; God’s
judgment is imbued with the attitude of One to Whom those actions are of the most
intimate and profound concern. God does not stand outside the range of human
suffering and sorrow. God is personally involved in, even stirred by, the
conduct and fate of man (volume II, pp. 3-4).
Heschel, “I and You,”
from The Ineffable Name of God: Man
Transmissions flow from your heart to Mine,
trading, twining my pain with yours.
Am I not—you? Are you not—I?
My nerves are clustered with Yours.
Your dreams have met with mine.
Are we not one in the bodies of millions?
Often I glimpse Myself in everyone’s form,
hear my own speech—a distant, quiet voice—in people’s
weeping,
as if under millions of masks My face would lie hidden.
I live in Me and in you.
Through your lips goes a word from Me to Me,
from your eyes drips a tear—its source in Me.
When a need pains You, alarm me!
When you miss a human being
tear open my door!
You live in Yourself, You live in me.
Mishnah Avot 5:9
Ten things were created at
twilight on the eve of the first Sabbath:
- the mouth of the earth [that swallowed Korach and his gang] (Numbers 16:32);
- the mouth of the well [by which the Israelites drank in the wilderness] (Num. 21:16);
- the mouth of the donkey [upon which Balaam rode] (Num. 22:28);
- the rainbow [after the flood] (Genesis 9:12);
- the manna [that fed the Israelites in the wilderness] (Exodus 16:14);
- Aaron's staff;
- the worm that cut the stones of the altar in the Holy Temple;
- the inscription on the tablets of the Ten Commandments;
- and the tablets themselves.
- Some also include the evil spirits, the grave of Moses, the ram of Abraham; and others add the original tongs, for tongs must be made with tongs.
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