Balaam: A Light to the Gentiles?

By Glenn A. Carnagey, Sr.

Glenn Carnagey earned his B.A. at the University of Texas, Th.M. at Dallas Theological Seminary, and Ph.D. at the University of Tulsa. Glenn has done extensive archaeological work in the Near East and editorial work for a major archaeological journal, as well as presented scholarly papers at meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society. Dr. Carnagey has also pastored churches in Texas, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. Glenn is a member of Chafer Seminary’s National Board of Advisors, is a contributing editor to the CTS Journal, and was instrumental in the formation of CTS.

Archaeological Background

In February and March of 1967, H. J. Franken was conducting excavations at Deir ‘Alla in the Jordan River Valley when his vigilant foreman, Abu Abdul Rasul, noticed writing on pieces of plaster being removed from the remains of an ancient building. He brought the information to the excavator.

That building probably was a sanctuary for a goddess whose name begins with the Hebrew letter “shin.” Shamash and Shgr have both been suggested as possibilities, especially Shgr, since it occurs later in the second combination in connection with the Council of the Gods.

This inscription is an eighth century narrative concerning the seer/prophet Balaam, well known to Bible students as the prophet who dominates Numbers 22–24. This inscription offers some useful insights into the biblical text.

Identifications

Then he sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor at Pethor, which is near the River in the land of the sons of his people, to call him, saying: “Look, a people has come from Egypt. See, they cover the face of the earth, and are settling next to me (Numbers 22:5)! [1]

Deir ‘Alla is located on the Jordanian side of the Jordan River Valley, near the spot where the Zerqa River flows into the Jordan. It is north of Jericho, but still within the wide swath of the Jordan River, which at this point has the Hassid plains on both sides. Moses quite accurately called this expanded area “The Plains of Moab.” However, the biblical text also sees the campsite as “this side of Jordan by Jericho,” hence it was a fair distance south of Deir ‘Alla.

No one has suggested in the literature that Deir ‘Alla could have been identified with Pethor during the lifetime of Balaam, but the excavations clearly demonstrate very limited Middle Bronze occupation followed by extensive Late Bronze and Iron Age cities. If not for Deuteronomy 23:4, it would be a tempting site for the phrase “by the river of his people” (Numbers 22:5), since the Jordan River is only a few hundred yards away. [2] Moses is again quite explicit, however, and reveals an Ammonite-Moabite conspiracy against Israel, during the description of which he identifies the city of Pethor as a Mesopotamian city (Deuteronomy 23:4). Later, [3] of course, we learn that the Midianites (or the Amorite-Midianite amalgamation) were also involved. This has a certain significance for the entrance of Israel into Cis-Jordan (=the land west of the Jordan River). Even though God had carefully proscribed any battles with the Ammonites, the Moabites or the Edomites—instructions which Moses was careful to obey—it seems they panicked anyway and formed an alliance to destroy the Israelites before they could cross the Jordan River and attack Jericho.

The Amorite Corridor

Moses and the people traveled up the old Desert Highway to avoid confrontation with their relatives. They instead cleared out what might be called the “Amorite Corridor,” land over which Sihon king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan controlled and ruled. If one takes the full extent of this geographical indicator seriously, the Israelites controlled the land from the Arnon River north across the Bashan of Syria to the shoulders of Mount Hermon. Indeed, Barry Beitzel, in the Moody Bible Atlas, extends the Trans-Jordanian inheritance for the two and a half tribes (Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh) into just those same boundaries. This massive land grab by the Israelites helps to explain the panic of the Moabites and Ammonites, in particular, when confronted with the Israelite army, now under Joshua, in a more southerly and hence more menacing campsite.

From the Scripture involved then, we can conclude that Moab and Ammon, together with “elders of Midian,” who at an earlier time had been associated with Edom to the south, took steps to destroy Israel, even though they had been totally spared by God and the nation of Israel. It is this traitorous behavior early in the post-exodus generation that led to the heavy penalty of a 10-generation exclusion from the Tabernacle and worship of Israel (Deuteronomy 23:3–6).

An Open Question

The problem of who the people of Balaam were is, at this point, quite an open question in scholarly dialogue. [4] Joshua 13:21 establishes the relevant facts:

(A)ll the cities of the plain and all the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, whom Moses had struck with the princes of Midian: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, who were princes of Sihon dwelling in the country. (Joshua 13:21)

This passage informs the reader that the Midianite princes (or kings, cf. Numbers 31:8) were in reality the remnant of Sihon’s Amorite kingdom. They acted as feudal kings, “dukes,” over the Midianites, who had somehow settled either within the Moabite territory or perhaps at its northern edge. Whether the five were indeed Amorites or not, they served Sihon who ruled in Heshbon. This rather enigmatic reference to the alliance between certain Midianites with the Amorite kingdom of Heshbon would strengthen the case regarding the archaeological excavations in Jordan at the site of Heshbon as the correct site for Pethor, since there was no occupation before the Iron Age.

Others suggest that Balaam was an Aramaean from further north, while those who hold to the validity of Scripture tend to accept a Mesopotamian origin for Balaam and would look to the region of the “Two Rivers” (the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) for Pethor. Hence, the “river of the land of the children of his people” (Numbers 22:5) would have to be either the Tigris or the Euphrates. He could, then, have been from the early generations of the Assyrians or from the Amorite or Kassite tribes who were prominent during the second millennium BC. It is even possible that some of the Sumero-Akkadian population groups had managed to continue into the 15th century BC (the date of Numbers), or that very early Aramaean tribal units in the southern region were his original home.

What was the nature of this prophet/seer Balaam? Why was his message deemed to be so important that a special sanctuary was constructed in honor of the goddess whose wrath his wisdom had averted and a stele erected with his message inscribed thereupon with red and black ink? [5] For a complete answer, one must move back in time to the interval during which Israel camped in the Plains of Moab, just before the death of Moses and the campaigns of the conquest in Cis-Jordan. It was a peculiar time, to say the least.

The Strange King

A strange king by the unlikely name of Agag was the greatest king known to Balaam (Numbers 24:7). Why not Thutmose, Rameses, Amenhotep, or some other Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt? Perhaps because this king was not an Egyptian Pharaoh at all—he was instead the king of the Amalekites. Balaam refers to this group of people in his great prophetic oracles of Numbers 22–24. In fact, he sees a world in which the Amalekites are the greatest nation in the world with the mightiest army, and Agag, probably Apop I or II, is their world-renowned king. Alternatively, more germane to the critical viewpoint, why were none of the neighbors of 7th century Israel mentioned, particularly the later Egyptian Dynasties?

The Amalekites seem to have disappeared shortly after the time of David and were certainly no threat by the time of Josiah. Strange, you ask? Indeed it is, yet that is exactly what the Scripture records over the three chapters that contain the history of Balaam at his greatest and best. Generations of scholars have glossed over the worldview painted by Balaam and have simply dismissed his description of the world powers of his day as a Seer’s frenetic rambling or the imagination of J, E, P, or D [6] (as P. Kyle McCarter). Most notice that the Amalekites were indeed on their way into Egypt when they met and fought the Jews at the point of their Exodus from Egypt. Yet, no mention is made of the connections to this mighty enemy of Israel found in Balaam’s Prophecies. There is no space in this article to ferret out the answers to these questions, but we surely must eventually find such answers in order to portray accurately the wider setting for the events being described.

Balaam and the New Testament

New Testament commentary, beginning with our Lord Jesus Christ’s evaluation in Revelation 2:14, credits Balaam with a rapid apostasy after the four powerful prophetic messages he delivered before the Moabites and their allies, the Midianites. The New Testament uniformly condemns the actions and advice of Balaam after the biblical passage in Numbers 22–24 ends.

But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication (Revelation 2:14). 

Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness (2 Peter 2:15). 

Woe unto them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core (Jude 11).

The way of Balaam, the error of Balaam, and the doctrine of Balaam are all excellent descriptions of a Prophet of God gone astray.

The Doctrine of Balaam

The doctrine of Balaam centers around the daughter of king Zur of Midian, one Cozbi, who upon the advice of Balaam set up a house of ill repute (more properly known as a cult shrine of the Phallic Cult) near the Israelite camp in the plains of Moab near Shittim. From this vantagepoint, it was but a simple matter to attract Israelite males into illicit relationships with the cosmopolitan and lovely Midianite/Moabite young women. Through sexual enticement, the Israelites were seduced into worshiping under the evil phallic cult of Canaan.

The consequences were dire indeed; one tribal leader, the Simeonite leader Zimri, son of Salu, and an additional 24,000 others died before the shame and divine judgment stemming from the success of Cozbi’s feminine warfare abated. The seriousness of the attack Numbers 25 records. Here God made an eternal covenant of peace with Phinehas, the “Phinehasic Covenant,” to honor his execution of Zimri and Cozbi while in flagrant immorality. Phinehas executed the rebels by throwing a javelin through both of their bodies, pinning them to the ground.

The Error of Balaam

The error of Balaam, on the other hand, deals with the problem of the love of money, or covetousness, which Paul defines as “idolatry” in Colossians 3:5. A number of references mention the interest Balaam took in cold hard cash.

Greed first appears in the willingness of Balaam to see if God had “changed his mind” about going with the emissaries of Balak to Moab. Balaam knew perfectly well that God, as Moses put it, was not a man that He should change His mind (Numbers 23:19). Balaam’s greed continues to build as he acquiesces to the repeated attempts by Balak to have him curse Israel from differing geographical positions. Each time Balaam gives the genuine message from the Lord to the Moabite king, but the fact that he is willing to try again suggests a certain willingness to accept the favors of Balak.

The climax of Balaam’s greed, however, is not described in Scripture in any detail. It is instead chronicled obliquely in the account of Balaam’s death. There we discover that after the events of the account in Numbers 22–24 occur and the Biblical account ends, Balaam has again returned to Moab and taken up residence in the midst of the Midianites, where we discover he has become the personal advisor of one of the five Amorite/Midianite dukes still holding power there, one King Zur, the infamous father of an even more infamous daughter.

We are specifically informed that it was Balaam’s advice to King Zur and his daughter Cozbi that led to the near disaster of Israel [7] that was only at the last moment averted by Phinehas’ loyalty to Yahweh in his execution of Cozbi and her Israelite lover. It is instructive to note that God gave enormous weight to the act of Phinehas. It was so important to the plan of God that He made an eternal and unconditional covenant with Phinehas for his actions, guaranteeing that one of his descendants would always be the High Priest of the nation of Israel. I have titled this almost totally unrecognized covenant as the “Phinehasic Covenant.,” It serves as a final divine proof of the seriousness of the threat that Balaam’s advice posed to the survival of Israel.

The Way of Balaam

Finally, the way of Balaam has to do with “forsaking the right way” and “loving the wages of unrighteousness.” Note, it does not say that he loved unrighteousness, only that he loved the wages that unrighteousness could produce for the person who follows it. Additionally, it says that they have gone astray, implying that they no longer functioned under the Laws of Divine Establishment.

One should note that in order to go astray, Balaam must have originally been on the correct path! While it is true that God declares Balaam’s way “perverse before him” (Numbers 22:33), it is still true that the four great oracles given by Balaam are legitimate. It fell to Moses, then, in his final order of battle, to send troops in to wipe out this enclave of Amorites mixed with Midianites in Transjordan.

Because of his sojourn among the Midianites further south, were Moses acquired his first wife, Zipporah, this must have been a particularly painful task to accomplish. At any rate, it was not necessarily the case that this enclave, which was in a position to hinder Israel’s crossing of the Jordan, was identical in makeup to that group further south. The biblical description in fact suggests that perhaps only five clans had intermixed with the Amorites and moved north.

Old Testament Insights

Two combinations of Aramaic literary text found at Deir ‘Alla offer a number of valuable insights for biblical Old Testament scholars. According to the broken translation, Balaam was connected with a cult of Moabites who worshiped the gods known as Shaddayim, or mountain gods. El Shadday is the name by which Yahweh was known to the Patriarchs some 400 years before the Exodus (Genesis 17:1). Hence, it is not unusual that Abraham, who came from Mesopotamia, should have the same name for God as Balaam and his followers among the Moabites. For Balaam also came from Mesopotamia, and hence the appellation “Shaddayyim” for the gods Balaam and his Moabite followers worshiped.

What Scripture does not report often may be as significant as what it does discuss. The role of Balaam in this case is most instructive in this regard. All of the things he did while in fellowship with Yahweh are given in considerable detail, while his return from his home country to become a military-political advisor to King Balak of Moab is mentioned obliquely in the account of his death in the Old Testament (Numbers 31:8). Only the off-hand report of the demise of Balaam late in Numbers provides the clues to what really happened (Joshua 13:21; Deuteronomy 23:4).

The literary nature of the Deir ‘Alla inscription is such that Cross wants to designate it as an “exemplar of the Ammonite National script of the 7th century BC.” McCarter disagrees strongly with this in view of the many un-Ammonite features of the inscription and opts for something more akin to “Transjordanian” or even “Gileadite.” This Aramaic, similar to the cursive Aramaic dialect, is akin to early Hebrew. Changes, which took place late in the course of linguistic development, have not yet occurred in this script and in this sense, it is more like Old Aramaic. [8] The consensus seems to be that the language is, if not poetic, at least “literary.” The gist of the revised translations seems to be that the world has been reversed in its behavior pattern, so that behavior opposite to that normally exhibited is the norm. This leads the Shaddayin, the High Gods, to decree an eternal darkness over the earth, to be administered by the goddess whose name we do not know, other than that it begins with Shin.

An Inference

It seems that Levine has done the best job of explaining what happened next. His suggestion, agreed to by Kaufman in his review article and by McCarter, was that Balaam was encouraged to try to remove the onus of carrying out this task from the goddess and by his magic was able successfully to relieve her of this repulsive mission. However, there was a penalty to pay and Balaam was directly in line to pay the price for his success. For interfering in the affairs of the gods, Balaam was banished to the underworld. [9] Still, there is scarcely a complete line in the entire inscription, and that factors heavily into the continuing scholarly debate about the significance of the find. Perhaps, with Kaufman, we will be forced to conclude as he did that “the Aramaic Texts from Deir ‘Alla” constitute one of those inscriptions that are destined to remain enticingly obscure.” [10]

If the meaning of the text is obscure, the significance of its existence and the location in which it was found are unmistakable. The non-biblical description of a biblical prophet has now been pushed back to the time of King Hezekiah, and the setting is one which suggests that the veneration of Balaam and his prophecies extend even further back into the history of Transjordan. It makes it easier for the reader to grasp the magnitude of the accomplishments to which this prophet to the Gentiles attained. The parallelism between Balaam and Moses is unmistakable and yet shocking. We are left to ponder the alternate pathways of two of God’s most spiritually significant prophets, and to observe that in their deaths, as in the last segment of their lives, the ministries of the two men were closely intertwined. They were in fact buried in the same Valley of Peor, and in death their graves were hidden from the sight of later generations, lest the temptation to worship them as gods become too great to resist.

Bibliography

• Baskin, J. R. “Origen on Balaam: The Dilemma of the Unworthy Prophet.” Vigiliae Christianae, 1. Vol. 37 (1983), 22–35.
• Caquot, A., and Lemaire, A. “Les Textes Arameens de Deir ‘Alla.” Syria, Vol. 54 (1977), 189–208.
• Coats, G. W. “Balaam: Sinner or Saint,” Biblical Research. Vol. 18 1973), 21–29.
• Cross, F. M. “Epigraphic Notes on the Amman Citadel Inscription,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Vol. 193 (1969), 13–19.
• Fitzmyer, J. A. A Review Article of Hoftijzer and van der Kooij, “Aramaic Texts from Deir ‘Alla.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly. Vol. 40 (1978), 93–95.
• Franken, H.J. “Texts from the Persian Period from Tell Deir ‘Alla.” Vetus Testamentum. Vol. 17 (1967), 480–481.
• Greenfield, J. C. Review of Hoftijzer and van der Kooij, “Aramaic Texts from Deir ‘Alla.” Journal of Semitic Studies. Vol. 25 (1980), 248–52.
• Hackett, J. A. The Balaam Text from Deir ‘Alla. Chico, Cal.: Scholars Press, 1984.
• Herdner, A. Corpus des Tablettes en Cuneiformes Alphabetiques. Paris: Imprimerie, 1963.
• Hoftijzer, J., and van der Kooij, G. Aramaic Texts from Deir ‘Alla. Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui 19. Leiden: Brill, 1976.
• Kaufman, S. A. The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
• __________ Review Article: “The Aramaic Texts from Deir ‘Alla.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Vol. 239 (1980), 71–74.
• Levine, B.A. “The Deir ‘Alla Plaster Inscriptions.” Journal of the American Oriental Society. Vol. 101 (1981), 195–205.
• Lichtheim, M. Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. Berkley: University of California Press, 1975.
• Lust, J. “Balaam, An Ammonite.” Ephemerides Theological Lovanienses. Vol. 54 (1978), 60–61.
• McCarter, P. Kyle, Jr. “The Balaam Texts from Deir ‘Allah: The First Combination.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Vol. 239 (1980), 49–60.
• Naveh, J. “The Date of the Deir ‘Alla Inscriptions in Aramaic Script.” Israel Exploration Journal. Vol. 17 (1967), 256–258.
• __________ Review of J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij, “Aramaic Texts from Deir ‘Alla.” Israel Exploration Journal. Vol. 29 (1979), 133–136.

Notes

1. Holy Bible, New King James Version (Nashvile, TN: Nelson, 1982). All Scripture citations are from the NKJV.
2. Because they did not meet you with bread and water on the road when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you (Deuteronomy 23:4).
3. See Numbers 31:8, They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of those who were killed—Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. Balaam the son of Beor they also killed with the sword.
4. The higher critics, who view this passage as a late 8th early 7th century document compare the phraseology in the Deir ‘Alla Inscription with Numbers 22–24 and see strong evidence for contemporary composition (as per Kyle McCarter). Some hold with Thompson that Balaam was an Ammonite, though again Deuteronomy 23:4 seems to prohibit this conclusion by calling him a Mesopotamian. Subsequent examination of the Deir ‘Alla Inscription, written upon the pieces of plaster at Deir ‘Alla some six centuries later, has yielded for this narrative various dates between 800 and 600 B.C. Based on orthography, a date between 750 and 700 BC seems to be the most commonly accepted one today.
5. See the opening paragraph of this article.
6. These four letters represent four editors that supposedly compiled the Old Testament, according to the Documentary Hypothesis. Both liberal (e.g., Dr. Cyrus Gordon) and conservative scholars have largely discredited this hypothesis.
7. See Numbers 31:8, 16, as well as Numbers 25.
8. A number of features are unusual to find in Aramaic at all. For example, the occurrence of the Waw Consecutive for narrative sequences, the vocabulary and even the niphal verbal conjugation as opposed to the pe'il stem of Aramaic seem out of place.
9. Van de Kooij and Ibrihim adopt this viewpoint in their recent publication Picking up the Threads, concerning the exhibit in the Netherlands in 1989.
10. S.A. Kaufman, Review Article, “The Aramaic Texts from Deir Alla” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 239 (1980) 74.