Why Parashas Balaq?

A lesson that can be learned from Parashas Balaq….
Why is the story of Balaq trying to hire Bil’am in the Chumash altogether? The Moavim don’t learn a lesson, they remain our enemies. Bil’am certainly didn’t change. And the Jews? We didn’t know anything about it at the time. And if it weren’t in the Torah, we still wouldn’t.
My daughter once fell off a cliff, and fell onto a rocky, dry, riverbed. Months later, when she finally was done healing, we made a Qiddush thanking G-d for saving her.
How many of us breathed a sigh of relief after a child had a close call crossing the street as well as they should have. But think how many times your child crossed the street and there was no close call. Isn’t that a much happier moment? Similarly, wouldn’t we have been happier had my daughter not slipped over the cliff’s edge?
And who knows, perhaps something distracted the driver for a moment leaving the house, which meant missing a light, and that’s the only reason the car didn’t arrive until 30 sec after the child was in the street.
How many times did you take the family on a trip and THANK G-D nothing went wrong?
Had the story not been in the Torah, indeed, we would never have known that we were under attack and Hashem saved us. But its inclusion can draw our attention to appreciating how Hashem is constantly so thoroughly saving us, we don’t even know we had been in danger!

משה כתב ספרו ופרשת בלעם ואיוב
Moshe wrote his book [i.e. Devarim], the chapter of Bil’am, and [the book of] Iyov.
Moshe is credited with three books:
  • The first is comprised of his final speeches preparing us for “real life” after the Exodus, a world where things can go wrong.
  • The second, included in our parashah, is about how Hashem is constantly protecting us — even more than we could know.
  • And the third, that Hashem has His reasons when He does let tragedy reach us — but those too is beyond our ability to know.

And who is more apt to tell us about the limits of what we know of how the Creator is there for us than Moshe Rabbeinu, the person who knew Hashem better than anyone else in history?

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *