Sefer Bamidbar

Parshat Balak:
On Listening to One’s Conscience

Parshat Balak is named for Balak the king of Moab, who asks a non-Jewish prophet named Balaam to put a curse on the Israelites, hoping to defeat them militarily. 

But Balaam, rather than cursing them right away, decides to wait overnight for instructions from God, who of course tells Balaam not to do it. 

Balak then further tries to entice Balaam, saying, “I will reward you richly and I will do anything you ask of me. Only come and curse this people for me.” 1 Balaam again nobly refuses—and again waits for an overnight message from God. 

God then tells Balaam he can travel to Moab, but he must do whatever God commands. So Balaam leaves on a donkey to go with Balak’s messengers, which despite the permission, angers God. So God sends an angel with a sword to stand in Balaam’s way. The catch: Only Balaam’s donkey can see the angel. 

Upon seeing it, the donkey is frightened and diverts from the path, and Balaam responds by beating her. As the angel moves closer, Balaam beats the donkey two more times, which leads to one of the Torah’s most bizarre sights: The donkey starts to talk. The Book of Numbers tells us: 

Then the Lord opened the ass’s mouth, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times?” 2

The Midrash Tanchuma reads another meaning into the three instances, saying, “She [the donkey] intimated to him, “You are seeking to uproot a people who celebrate three pilgrimage festivals in the year!” 3

Balaam’s exchange with the donkey in the Torah continues: 

Balaam said to the ass, “You have made a mockery of me! If I had a sword with me, I’d kill you.”

The ass said to Balaam, “Look, I am the ass that you have been riding all along until this day! Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?” And he answered, “No.” 4


God then “uncovered Balaam’s eyes” 5 so he could see the armed angel that the donkey had been avoiding. 

Balaam continues on to meet with the Moabite king and waits for another message from God. And Balaam, again doing what is right, tells everyone that he cannot curse the Israelites and instead blesses them three times. 

So what on earth was going on with the talking donkey incident? The simplest read is that this was a super miraculous divine intervention that caused the animal to literally talk.

The great medieval commentator Abraham ibn Ezra took this view. He noted that Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, says that “Ten things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight,” and the third of these is “the mouth of the donkey.” 6 Ibn Ezra explained:

I believe that this means that God specifically decreed the creation of these miraculous phenomena, for they are beyond the laws of nature. 7

Rambam (Maimonides) takes a different approach and posits that the talking donkey episode took place only in a prophetic vision. He wrote:

We have already explained that whenever the sight or speech of an angel is mentioned, it is actually in a prophetic vision or dream. You should know this and fully comprehend it. 8

I’d like to consider two alternative views, though. First, by respecting the dignity of all creatures, we can imagine that intelligent animals always have the ability to “talk.” The miracle was that Balaam could hear and comprehend what she was “saying.”

But more appealing to me is the idea that the voice of the donkey was actually caused by the voice of Balaam’s conscience. God’s opening the mouth of the donkey was, more precisely, an instance of God talking to Balaam through his conscience, telling him it was wrong to beat her. 

When we do harm—or are about to do harm—there is a voice of conscience that emerges in us. 

Sometimes we can project that voice onto others, such as how Balaam heard the message directly from the donkey, because he feels it so strongly. But on the deepest level, that voice of conscience is the voice of God. In fact, it may be one of the most powerful voices of God we can access. It can come when we feel guilt or shame, and it can also come in a more prophetic sense, as a calling to do what is right.

However, of course not every emotion we feel is the voice of God; we have to learn to decipher. It takes a great deal of spiritual wisdom to differentiate between the ego and the divine, and between powerful emotions emerging from anxiety and the divine. 

Pirkei Avot states: “Without wisdom, there is no awe; without awe, there is no wisdom.” 9 The Hebrew term used here for awe is yirah, which can also be translated as conscience. In other words, one’s expanded place of awe could be deemed one’s place of conscience. The dictum then reads: “Without wisdom, there is no conscience; without conscience, there is no wisdom.” 

If we can find a way to cultivate such wisdom, we have the opportunity to discover deeper truths. That’s what Balaam is experiencing there, and that’s what many of us can experience in our search for moral truth. 

Regarding the importance of this, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg taught the following: 

Hermann Rauschning, a close associate of Hitler in his early days, described Hitler’s reasoning for his hatred of the Jews: “Conscience is a Jewish invention… my task is to free men from the dirty and degrading ideas of conscience and morality.” We wrestled with Stalinism and multiple tyrannies which claimed total authority and resented our teaching to uphold conscience and give absolute obedience only to God and never to human systems. 10 

In honoring the Jewish tradition—and human morality—we must remember to constantly turn to our conscience. When faced with difficult, pressing moral decisions, we must search for moral clarity before acting. 

Sources

  1.  Numbers 22:17
  2.  Numbers 22:28-30
  3.  Numbers 22:29-30
  4.  Numbers 22:29-30
  5.  ibid. 22:31
  6.  Pirkei Avot 5:6
  7.  Ibn Ezra on Numbers 22:28
  8.  Maimonides, Moreh Nevuchim (Guide to the Perplexed), essay 2:42.
  9.  Pirkei Avot 3:17
  10.  Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, “Our Name is Israel: Parashat Vayishlach 5781”