There is a famous dictum about the Jews, “Jewish history is Jewish destiny”. Or as the RaMBaN puts its, “what happened to our forefathers is a forerunner for that which will happen to us”. Therefore whatever transpires to the Jews throughout world history normally has a precedent from earlier times.
We are all too familiar with the biased reporting in the news. A comment from the late Rav Isaac Bernstein shows us how old this problem is. He quotes R’ Naftali Galante who wistfully remarks how such biased reporting by the nations of the world against the Jews has long been a problem, and indeed what we see in Jewish history is playing itself out as our destiny. The Parshah opens with the words, “and Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorite”. It would seem from Balak’s perspective, as though the Jews had commenced an aggressive war against the Amorites. Taking a look at the incident reported at the end of last week’s Parshah we will see that quite the opposite occurred. The Jews had begged the Amorite king Sichon to allow them to pass through his land and offered to pay for the food they consumed and for the water they drank. Sichon not only refused them permission but went out to battle against the Jews, initiating an aggressive campaign which he then proceeded to lose! Balak conveniently omitted this information from his report.
Balak’s selective reporting is particularly slanted and absurd in that Balak seemed to forget that it was the Amorites themselves who had battled against him and conquered part of his land [Moav] whereas the Jews themselves had been warned against doing battle with Moav. In fact it was only the part of Moav that had been captured away from them by the Amorites that the Jews had permission to take, precisely because they were forbidden to wage war against Moav. Perhaps you will say this had long been forgotten by Balak? But who does he employ to ‘take down’ the Jews? Bila’am. Bila’am was the prophet who King Sichon had employed to help him win his battle against Moav!!
We can further this idea when we consider the geography of the area. The Jews were advancing towards the Land of Israel. From the last verse of last week’s Parshah we note that they were already on the banks of the River Jordan. The land of Canaan (soon to be Eretz Yisroel), was what lay in front of them. Moav due to the instruction to leave them alone had already been circumvented and had nothing to fear.
With all this information, why then was Balak gripped with fear against the Jews? Perhaps the fear that Moav had at his time from the Jews was similar to the fear they had against the Jews when they left Egypt. In the song sung when the Jews emerged form the Yam Suf they said, “Peoples heard – they tremble; terror gripped the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chieftains of Edom were confounded, trembling gripped the mighty of Moav”. Comments Rashi: “Is it not true that they [Moav] had nothing to fear, for it was not against them that [the Jews] were advancing? But Moav trembled because of their dejection. They were mourning and lamenting over the honour of Israel”. Hearing about the success of Israel emerging from Egypt in the most glorious manner was too much for Moav to hear. Moav’s animosity towards the Jews was now a given – even when presented with all the reasons to assume otherwise. Biased selective reporting as we read in this week’s Parshah was just to justify their attack against us and put down our honour.
Let us conclude with one last observation from Rabbi Aryeh Masher on Balak’s report – or perhaps better put his justification of fear. We read, “and Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorite. And Moav became very frightened of the people because it was numerous”. Really! Was the reason that the Jews had conquered the Amorites because it was numerous? Did the Jews leave Egypt and walk through the Yam Suf (The Red Sea) on its own? Balak again omits form his report the most important fact. The Jews had G-d on their side. How else did they conquer the giant Sichon? We know that Sichon picked up a huge mountain and was poised to throw it on top of the Jews to wipe them out. Hashem sent an army of ants to cause the mountain to crumble in his hands and fall on his own head. Conveniently Balak wanted to deny Hashem as having anything to do with the Jew’s success.
The Rosh Kollel further adds: that Balak knew about the great miracles that had happened but rather then admit that Hashem was behind it, he attributed it to the word of Moshe, his witchcraft had helped the Jews win the wars. To this he employed Bila’am whose power was also in his mouth to counteract the word of Moshe.
Good Shabbos, Yaakov
