PART ONE

BALAAM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE

ANCIENT NEAR EAST, AND COMPARABLE FIGURES
IN ANCIENT GREECE

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 BALAAM THE VILLAIN:
THE HISTORY OF RECEPTION OF THE
BALAAM NARRATIVE IN THE PENTATEUCH AND
THE FORMER PROPHETS

Ed Noort

To the Memory of Timo Veijola, 1947–2005, a Friend and Colleague1

1. Introduction

In the Hebrew Bible, Balaam is a famous foreign seer, a truly remark-

able character in Numbers 22–24. Israel escapes a near-death situa-
tion in the desert by being blessed instead of cursed. The leading role
in this drama is taken by the diviner Balaam, ‘the man whose sight
is clear, . . . who hears the words of El, who obtains knowledge from
Elyon and sees the vision from Shadday’.2 In the narrative itself he
has no title. He is not called a prophet (aybn), nor a seer (hzj/har), nor
a man of God (μyhlah vya). But, as all his actions show, including his
answers to Balak and his repeated statements to the leaders of Moab,
he has the ability to curse and bless3 as well as tell the future.4 Yet he
uses his powers only after listening to the word of YHWH. On the one
hand he is a stranger, foreign to Israel. On the other hand, he acts like
an Israelite seer, even like a prophet bound to the word of YHWH.
Although other currents are present, the main stream of the final text
of Numbers 22–24 is a positive narrative. Balaam is an intermediary
who saves Israel, blessing the people as ordered by YHWH.

1
Timo Veijola belonged during the seventies to our group of doctoral students at
Göttingen together with Walter Dietrich (Bern), Hermann Spieckermann (Göttingen),
Christoph Levin (München) and Dietrich Baltzer (Münster). Our small class met at the
home of Walther Zimmerli, later on at the faculty with the other supervisors Rudolf
Smend, Lothar Perlitt and Robert Hanhart.
2
Num 24:15b , 16ab , cf. 24:3–4.* Cf. the use of the verb hzj and the noun hzjm.
Balaam’s professional praxis is that of a hzj.
3
Num 22:6.
4
Cf. the explication by H. Seebass, Numeri (BKAT 4.3.1), Neukirchen-Vluyn 2004,
73 and his translation of μymsq as ‘instruments for divination’, not ‘fees for divination’
and 23:23 und 24:1 (μy)vjn as ‘omen(s)’.

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