Like a play within a play, the episode with Balaam confronts us with a truly paradoxical figure: a God-fearer who could prophetically proclaim the rise of Israel but dies merely a soothsayer, almost as a passing footnote.
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Everyone knows that simply looking at something cannot cure a deadly snakebite. What healed the Israelites was the power of God, through their display of faith in looking at the serpent raised up by Moses. It’s a testament to God’s character that, despite the lack of faith shown by the Israelites again and again, once they repented, he gave them a means to display faith in him once more, and by it, be saved from certain death.
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Ever heard the title Mutiny on the Bounty? On April 28, 1789, Lieutenant Fletcher Christian seized control of HMS Bounty, and set Captain William Bligh adrift in a small boat on the open sea. I mention it here, because we’re looking at one of the Hebrew Bible’s versions of a mutiny—in this case, against Moses not Bligh.
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The fears, horrors, and insecurities of our childhoods do not disappear with time, as we might imagine, but rather remain buried deep in our psyche only to reemerge in more sophisticated expressions. Unless we slay, shrink, or unmask the monsters and giants of our past, they make a home next to our “child within.”
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When walking by faith, we are not guaranteed the knowledge of the “whats and whys” of our walk. Like Israel, we may not know how long that walk might be or what its various stops or detours might be like. We can have our hopes or ideas, but in all things, we must trust in Hashem.
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A man becomes suspicious that his wife has been cheating on him. He has no proof, only his feelings of jealousy. So, the husband publicly accuses his wife of adultery and brings her to the temple to perform a ritual to prove her guilt.
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The Jewish people did not experience true liberation of mind, body, and soul until they came to Mt Sinai, heard the voice of God, and received the Torah. On Shavuot we celebrate not just being given some laws; we celebrate being given our freedom, our identity, and our soul.
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When things threaten to drift out of control, we may sometimes need to paddle harder, or we may need to recognize this anxious moment as an opportunity to trust God more deeply.
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How can we meet God’s standards? How are we to respond to a scriptural reality in which the penalty for transgressions is often a painful and gruesome death, and the result of impurity is exile? When we mess up, are we done? Are we finished? Is that what it means to follow God?
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Being holy can be summed up in the command to love your neighbor and the alien (stranger, foreigner) as yourself. Being holy means being set apart, being distinct. It means having the courage to be different than the world around us.
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