Questions and Commentary on Parashat Chuqqat-Balaq
Chayyei Yeshua - A Devotional Commentary on the Besora Reading Looking Ahead
Questions & Commentary on Parashat Chuqqat-Balaq
1. What is the purpose
of Bil‘am's oracles about Israel?
What can we learn from this purpose?
David
Nichol
Our sidra this
week is full of paradox and irony. Bil‘am himself is a contradictory
character. Nechama Leibowitz points out that he is probably more sorcerer
than prophet, as evidenced by the wording of his encounters with God,
along with his attempts to "manipulate" God to curse Israel (e.g.
the building of seven altars in Numbers 23:1). While he speaks eloquently
of subservience to God - "Though Balaq were to give me his house
full of silver and gold, I could not do anything, big or little, contrary
to the command of the LORD my God" (Numbers 22:18) - the Moabite
nobles only need ask him twice before he accompanies them to Balaq's
side. Bil‘am describes himself as one who sees clearly ("whose eye
is true," Numbers 24:4), yet he does not see the angel of the LORD
standing in the road to kill him, only being saved by the perceptiveness
of . . . his donkey.
Israel is also portrayed
in ironic fashion, wandering in the wilderness, hungry (Numbers 21:5),
thirsty (20:5), complaining at every turn. They have had divisions (16:1-3),
defeats (14:45), and rejections (20:18-21). Even snakes (21:6) are joining
the fray, biting away at the ranks of Israel. There have been some recent
victories, but only recently they felt like "grasshoppers" compared
with the people they were to conquer (13:33). Yet for some reason Balaq,
the king of Moab, fears them so much that he feels the need to hire
Bil‘am to curse Israel.
This may
in fact be the operative paradox in our sidra. Here is a stubborn,
ungrateful people who seemingly had little to commend them. Our ancestors
were miraculously given food and water in the desert. Their shoes did
not wear out, and they saw miracles and wonders without parallel. Yet
they fought against being redeemed at every turn. One could say that
perhaps Bil‘am, gazing down from the mountain on the hordes of Jacob
that "hides the earth from view" (Numbers 22.5), was too far away
to see the ugly side. The sages connect Bil‘am's words with Israel's
moral virtue, but even at the end of the sidra, Israel is descending
into immorality and idolatry, and the LORD punishes them with plague.
Would Bil‘am's oracles have been different if he got to spend a
few weeks among those tents of Jacob that from afar appeared so . .
. "goodly?"
But we cannot forget
that Bil‘am was not speaking his own words. Rather, he was seeing
Israel as the LORD truly saw Israel, through eyes of love - love that
transcended the sins and inadequacies of the newly (or barely?) redeemed.
Not a blind love, but a love that saw the germ of goodness in the people,
the beauty of their humanity, and perhaps even an inkling of their potential.
If God sees potential
in the dwellings of Israel, it is not fully realized yet, even in our
day. But it is no less true. Bil‘am's final oracle, the most
eloquent and powerful, gives us a hint that what he sees through the
Ruach Elohim (Numbers 24:2) is not yet realized:
What
I see for them is not yet,
What
I behold will not be soon:
A
star rises from Jacob,
A
scepter comes forth from Israel;
It
smashes the brow of Moab,
The
foundation of all the children of Seth.
Surely the future
glory of Israel is wrapped up in this scepter from Israel, the Mashiach,
the branch sprouting from the son of Jesse/Yishai, who will bring
glory to Israel and justice to the whole world. All this would be difficult
to glean from the chapters surrounding our parasha, replete with
the rebellions and punishments of a stiff-necked people. But the seeing-eye
perceives more.
If this hidden glory
is perceptible in Benei Yisra'el while wandering in the wilderness
fresh out of slavery, it stands to reason that it is true among us even
now. Just as that glory is obscured in the wandering narratives by the
complaining and rebellion, the glory and beauty hidden in the Jewish
people and the whole body of Mashiach is often obscured by our
own fractiousness, selfishness, and petty disagreements. Even looking
within at our own congregations, it is often easier to see failings
and dysfunctions than to perceive righteousness and power. But
wrongly so.
May we, like Bil‘am,
be given open eyes to see past the difficult aspects of living attached
to a community, and behold the image of God in his people - even those
we see every week!
2. In
Parashat Chuqqat Moses is rebuked by God and prohibited from
leading the people of Israel into the promised land (see Numbers 20:12).
The Torah seems to be ambiguous as to what
Moses did wrong. What is Moses' failure in leadership, and how can
we apply this episode to ourselves?
Nick
Amic
What was the lack
of leadership that excluded Moses from leading Israel into the promised
land in this week's parasha? The commentators list as many
as ten different reasons, each focusing on a different nuance of the
text. God's twofold rebuke to Moses consists of: 1) Moses' lack
of faith, and 2) his failure to sanctify God before Israel (Numbers
20:12). Ramban rhetorically asks "is it possible that Moses did not
believe God could perform the miracle?" Instead, he suggests we render
the verse, "beacause you did not cause them (Israel) to believe in
Me." When Israel complains (see 20:1-5) Moses and Aaron's response
is to "come to the Tabernacle [in fear] from the congregation, and
. . . fall on their faces" (20:6), instead of immediately challenging
Israel (as he did forty years earlier in the incident at Refedim -
see Exodus 17:1-7).
A few chapters earlier,
Moses's leadership is challenged by Qorach. There God performs a miracle
using Aaron's staff as the signal that indeed Moses and Aaron are
God's true mediators. God directs Moses to use Aaron's staff to
"be a sign for any rebellious group [in the future]" (17:26). Here
is the key to understanding how Moses fails to sanctify the LORD in
our parasha. The LORD commands Moses to take "the staff"
(Numbers 20:8) to gather the people. Given the circumstances this can
be none other than Aaron's staff meant to remind rebellious Israel
of earlier events. Therefore, Moses interprets Gods command to speak
to the rock as "speak about the rock" in order to challenge Israel:
"is it possible for a rock to give water?!" Moses hits the rock
(as he did in the incident at Horeb forty years earlier) however with
his own staff (20:11) and not Aaron's, thus failing to truly follow
God by taking matters into his own hands.
Moses is not punished
for a technical flaw in fulfilling God's command, rather he fails
as a leader when faced with a crucial opportunity to remind Israel to
maintain its faith in God in face of challenging circumstances on the
one hand and on the other hand to warn Israel not to go looking to other
sources of direction. Yeshua, described in Paul's midrash as the very
rock in our parasha (see 1 Corinthians 10:4) told the woman at
the well "he who believes in me will never be thirsty" (John 6:35).
However, he also gave us a sobering directive to be a witness of this
ultimate quenching of our spiritual thirst by warning, "Therefore
everyone who confesses me (i.e. sanctifies Yeshua) before men, I will
also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies
me (does not sanctify Yeshua) before men, I will also deny him before
my Father" (Matthew 10:32-33). Like Moses we have the crucial opportunity
to challenge Israel to have faith that the same God who led us out of
physical slavery in Egypt has now given us the ultimate provision in
Yeshua to lead us out of spiritual slavery. We can take part of the
waters of Yeshua's Torah which quenches our soul's deepest longings.
Mark 15:1-15 - The True
King
Andrea
Hoffrichter
The final events leading
up to the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Yeshua are the focus
of this chapter. As the drama unfolds, a prisoner named Barabbas enters
the scene right before the final judgment of Yeshua.
Scholars have long
debated the identity of Barabbas. Some have argued that Barabbas
was actually Yeshua; others say that the passage is a parable, noting
that the practice of releasing a prisoner is an element of a literary
creation of Mark, who needed to have a contrast to the true "Son of
the Father." Matthew 3 refers to Barabbas only as a "notorious prisoner,"
John 18:40 describe him as a "bandit," and Mark and Luke further
refer to Barabbas as "one involved in a riot."
Barabbas was most
likely a leader of a group of Jewish revolutionaries called Zealots,
so named because of their resolve to overthrow and eliminate the Romans
who occupied Israel. The penalty for Barabbas' crime was death by
crucifixion, but according to the four gospels there was a prevailing
Passover custom in Jerusalem that allowed or required Pilate to substitute
one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim. The crowd was offered
a choice of whether to have Barabbas or Yeshua released from Roman custody.
They chose Barabbas to be released, and Yeshua of Nazareth to be crucified.
Barabbas embodied
the desires of the Jewish people for a warrior-prince Messiah who would
expel the hated Romans from Israel and usher in a kingdom liberated
from Roman oppression. Yeshua, on the other hand, speaks of a different
kingdom in John 18:
My
kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to
prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.
The true ‘Son of
the Father" and "King of the Jews" portrayed in Zechariah 9 is
very different from a warrior-prince Messiah. This king is not coming
to fight a war; he comes in gentleness and meekness. He is the king
over all the earth. He has all authority, but he comes in this humble
fashion, riding on a baby donkey, as opposed to a chariot or even a
great horse. Yeshua chose humility over power. He was executed as a
criminal, with his "crime"-being a king-posted above his tortured
body. He sacrificed his life to allow the Kingdom of Heaven, a kingdom
of healing, righteousness, and spiritual liberation, to break through
to the entire world.
Learning 
