Balak and Balaam: the Curse That Became a Blessing

Having defeated Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan, Israel camped in the plains of Moab opposite Jericho. Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, decided to fight not with weapons but with words, and sent for Balaam son of Beor, a famous seer whose blessings and curses were held to come true. Balaam hesitated, haggled, asked permission twice and went. On the road his donkey saw an angel with a drawn sword and turned aside three times; Balaam beat her until she spoke: what have I done to you that you strike me these three times? Then his own eyes were opened. Three times Balak took him to a new summit and built seven altars there, and three times a blessing came out instead of a curse; the fourth oracle Balaam spoke unbidden, with no altars at all. One of them opens the Jewish morning service: how goodly are your tents, Jacob. Leaving empty-handed, Balaam gave Balak advice that worked: Moabite and Midianite women drew Israel to the idol of Peor, and a plague killed twenty-four thousand before Phinehas stopped it.

Here the chronologies differ not by years but by a century. Seder Olam Rabbah places the Exodus in 1313 BCE. The prevailing academic date is the thirteenth century, the time of Ramesses II: its firm anchor is the stele of Pharaoh Merneptah of 1208 BCE, the first mention of Israel outside the Tanakh, where Israel is already in Canaan. A minority of scholars holds to the fifteenth century, reckoning by the plain count of I Kings 6:1 — four hundred and eighty years from the Exodus to Solomon's Temple. The timeline shows the prevailing dating.