Bemidbar

In the first census of Bnei Yisrael, in Parashat Bamidbar, Ephrayim is presented as the first and foremost among the sons of Rachel, with their banner being in Ephrayim’s name and Menashe and Binyamin joining in (Bamidbar 2:18-24). While the encampment order remains in our parasha, when the sons of Yosef are counted, Menashe comes before Ephrayim.

Who (or what) was Bilam really? The commentaries have always dealt with this thorny issue. On the pasuk, “Another prophet like Moshe never arose in Israel, whom Hashem knew face to face” (Devarim 34:10), Chazal (Sifrei , V’zot Haberacha 357:10) derived an extremely positive appraisal: “While in Israel there was not as great as Moshe, among the nations there was Bilam.” The difference is that Moshe did not know Who was speaking to him, and Bilam did know; Moshe did not know when Hashem would speak to him and Bilam did know. To put things in perspective, they explained that Bilam knew so much, just like a royal chef knows about the ins and outs of the goings on of the king’s kitchen – without being an important officer. In this vein, Moshe is uniquely described as, “in My house, he is trusted” (Bamidbar 12:7).

We have discussed in the past Bnei Yisrael’s relationship with the nation of Edom. Now we will take a look at Moav’s relationship with Edom, as portrayed by Amos: “For the three sins of Moav, and for the fourth I will not let them be – on the fact that they burned the bones of the King of Edom into lime” (Amos 2:1).