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Fifteen-Year-Old Balaam Sank Africa's Army in Wax

Zepho pushed Agnias to invade Egypt and crush Jacob's sons. A fifteen-year-old Balaam sank wax armies in water, and the king canceled war.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Raids Before the Great War
  2. The Boy Among the Shield-Bearers
  3. Why Egypt Was Already a Furnace
  4. The Captain Who Could Not Bear Peace
  5. Wax, Water, and a Deferred Spear
Fifteen-Year-Old Balaam Sank Africa's Army in Wax Click for full size

Raids Before the Great War

The king of Africa showed strange mercy at Benevento because the city leaned toward Kittim, the sea people later whispered as Cyprus, Greece, or Italy. Restraint did not mean peace. Captain Zepho led raiding parties into Kittim's land until the coast learned the sound of African horses as a seasonal weather.

King Agnias traveled to Pozimana, married Yaniah, and brought her home as queen while the raids still smoked. Wedding music and low war shared the same calendar. Zepho wanted more than plunder. He wanted Egypt broken and the sons of Jacob under the spear.

He pressed Agnias until the king agreed to consider a full invasion. A mighty army gathered. Boots, shields, and hunger for Jacob's house filled the muster lists. Zepho finally smelled the war he had been breeding.

The Boy Among the Shield-Bearers

Among the shield-bearers stood a fifteen-year-old named Balaam son of Beor, already called wise and an adept in magic. The same mouth that would later sell curses against Israel first sold foresight to a nervous king. Agnias feared the march more than he loved Zepho's counsel. He asked the boy to read the war before the first arrow flew.

Balaam shaped wax men for Africa and wax men for Egypt. He plunged both armies into magic water and watched them swim. The African figures went under. The Egyptian figures held. The pool returned a verdict colder than any scout's report.

Agnias saw his own host subdued in miniature and called off the campaign. A teenage soothsayer with warm wax undid what a captain of raids had spent months assembling. The king trusted the water more than Zepho's hunger.

Why Egypt Was Already a Furnace

Zepho had aimed at the sons of Jacob in a land that already knew how to strangle Hebrews inside their own walls. Executioners worked houses until groans rose, and God heard the covenant names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The house of Israel counted years of affliction against older promises of four hundred years, and later reckoners would say the body of the stay in Egypt was two hundred ten years of crushing heat.

Idols still stood thick in that land, waiting for the day the Lord would execute judgments upon Egypt's gods. Zepho wanted to break Jacob's seed from outside. Heaven was already writing a longer war from inside the brick pits and the night cries.

An African invasion would have arrived as one more empire stacking itself on top of a furnace. Balaam's wax said the stack would fall the wrong way for Agnias.

The Captain Who Could Not Bear Peace

Zepho watched the canceled march the way a gambler watches dice freeze midair. He had pushed, mustered, and almost owned a war against Israel. A boy with water and wax had stolen it. Seeing he could not bend the king, Zepho fled Africa for Kittim rather than live under a peace he despised.

Some men leave a court because they lost favor. Zepho left because he lost a slaughter. Kittim received a captain who preferred open coast raids to the humiliation of a king who believed omens over ambition.

The same Balaam who saved Egypt for a season would later ride toward Israel's camps with curses for sale. The first time his craft touched Jacob's house, it kept African spears from the border. The later times would test whether heaven would let any wax or word rewrite the covenant.

Wax, Water, and a Deferred Spear

Africa's army never crossed. Egypt's furnaces still burned. Jacob's sons still groaned under a different empire's weight. Zepho carried his frustration to Kittim, and Balaam carried his craft into a longer story that would not stay a boy's game with floating figures.

For one night the fate of an invasion sat in a basin of magic water. Agnias believed what sank. Zepho believed only in the war that had been taken from him. Between them, Israel's survival did not look like a miracle from within the Hebrew tents. It looked like a foreign king's fear of a teenage diviner.

Heaven keeps stranger ledgers than captains admit. A canceled campaign left Jacob's children under Pharaoh rather than under Agnias, and the furnace that refined them remained the one God had already named in covenant speech.

Wax softens in heat. So does a king's resolve when a pool returns defeat. Agnias had married Yaniah and mustered a host in the same season of appetite. One appetite wanted a queen. The other wanted Jacob's sons under boot. Balaam's basin fed only the second appetite a corpse.

Zepho's raids on Kittim had been practice. Egypt was the prize that would have paid for years of low war. When the prize vanished, he chose exile over obedience. Captains who live for invasion do not retire into peace treaties. They change coasts and keep the hunger.

In the Hebrew houses the strangling still went on without African help. Covenant memory still rose with the groans. The canceled invasion did not cancel the furnace. It only chose which empire would hold the tongs.

BalaamZephoAgniasEgyptKittimMagic
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From the tradition

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Legends of the Jews 1:439Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

The Legends of the Jews, that incredible compilation by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, gives us glimpses into just that kind of world. a story of kings, armies, and a very clever young sorcerer.

Our tale begins with the King of Africa, who, for reasons unexplained in this brief excerpt, shows surprising restraint when he encounters the city of Benevento. He doesn't inflict harsh measures, because, Kittim, often associated with the descendants of Japheth in biblical genealogy (Genesis 10:4), is frequently interpreted as referring to Cyprus, Greece, or even Italy. So, Benevento had some kind of affiliation with this Mediterranean power.

Peace doesn't last.

Soon, raiding parties from Africa, led by a captain named Zepho, begin making incursions into the land of Kittim. It's a low-level conflict, a simmering tension. Meanwhile, King Agnias, the ruler of Africa, travels to Pozimana to marry Yaniah, bringing her back to his capital as his queen. Life, it seems, goes on – even amidst the raids.

However, Zepho has bigger plans. He relentlessly pushes King Agnias to invade Egypt, to wage war against the sons of Jacob – the Israelites. Finally, Agnias relents and agrees to consider the idea. A mighty army is prepared, ready to march on Egypt.

Now, here's where the story gets really interesting. Among the shield-bearers is a fifteen-year-old boy named Balaam, the son of Beor. Yes, that Balaam, the one who later appears in the Book of Numbers! Even as a youth, Balaam is described as wise and "an adept in magic." King Agnias, understandably anxious about the impending war, asks Balaam to use his skills to foresee the outcome.

So, what does young Balaam do? He takes wax and molds figures of men, representing both the African army and the Egyptian army. Then, he plunges these figures into "magic water" and watches them swim. The result? The African army, Agnias' army, is subdued by the Egyptians.

Based on this magical divination, Agnias calls off the campaign. Imagine the frustration of Zepho! He's been working so hard to instigate this war, and now it's all for naught. Seeing that he can't persuade his king to attack the Israelites, Zepho makes a drastic decision: he flees the country and goes to Kittim.

What does this tell us? It's a fascinating glimpse into a world where political decisions were influenced by both military strategy and magical omens. A world where a teenager's sorcery could avert a war. And, perhaps, it's a reminder that even the most ambitious plans can be thwarted by unexpected forces. What motivates Zepho? Is it strategic advantage, or something more personal? The text doesn't say, leaving us to wonder about the motivations of this captain who would rather flee than accept peace. Perhaps, in Zepho's mind, some conflicts are simply unavoidable.

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Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 48:14Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, trans. Rabbi Gerald Friedlander, London (1916) · CC-BY

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer turns to Abraham Isaac and Jacob of Egypt.

He tells us, in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, a fascinating and often imaginative collection of stories and teachings, that Pharaoh's executioners didn't just enslave the Israelites. They strangled them within the very walls of their homes! And God, blessed be He, heard their cries, as it's written in (Exodus 2:24): "And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob." This wasn't just oppression; it was a systematic attempt to extinguish their very existence.

It gets worse. Rabbi Akiva continues, saying the Egyptians "burnt their children in the furnace of fire." A chilling image, and one that resonates with the verse in (Deuteronomy 4:20): "But the Lord hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt." The verse casts Egypt as an "iron furnace," a place of unimaginable heat and torment where the Israelites were refined, or rather, almost destroyed. The idea of burning children.. it’s almost too awful to contemplate.

Why is Rabbi Akiva painting such a bleak picture? Perhaps to emphasize the magnitude of the Exodus, the sheer miraculous nature of their deliverance. To show that God didn't just free them from slavery, but from a living hell.

And what happened when the Israelites finally left Egypt? According to Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, God didn't just let them go. He actively destroyed the idols, the "abominations" of Egypt. "Upon their gods also the Lord executed judgments," as we read in (Numbers 33:4). This wasn't just a political liberation; it was a spiritual one. God was dismantling the very foundations of the oppressive society that had enslaved His people. The Exodus wasn't just about leaving a place; it was about leaving behind a whole way of life, a whole system of belief. And God didn't just passively allow it to happen; He actively intervened to break the power of those false gods.

What "furnaces" are we still trying to escape?

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Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 48:2Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, trans. Rabbi Gerald Friedlander, London (1916) · CC-BY

The familiar version gives us the verse: "And they shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years" (Gen. 15:18). But how does that square with other timelines we find in the Torah? It’s a question that's occupied Jewish thinkers for centuries. to one fascinating attempt to reconcile these timelines, found in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, chapter 48.

Rabbi Elazar, son of 'Azariah, takes us on a fascinating journey through the generations to try and understand this apparent discrepancy. He starts with a bold statement: the Israelites were only in Egypt for 210 years! How does he arrive at this figure? First, he looks at Joseph. When Joseph first arrived in Egypt, he was seventeen years old. By the time he stood before Pharaoh, he was thirty, as it's written, "And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh, king of Egypt" (Gen. 41:46). Then, you have the seven years of plenty followed by two years of famine. That’s another nine years (7+2), bringing us to a total of 39 years accounted for in Joseph's life.

Next, he considers Levi, Jacob’s son. Levi was six years older than Joseph, making him forty-five when he journeyed down to Egypt. He lived in Egypt for ninety-two years, as it says, "And the years of the life of Levi were an hundred thirty and seven years" (Ex. 6:16). So, Levi lived to be 137 years old. Adding those 92 years to the previous 45 years of his life gets us to a total of 137 years accounted for so far.

Here's where it gets even more interesting. According to Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, Levi's wife gave birth to Jochebed, who would later become Moses' mother, as soon as they arrived in Egypt. As it says, "And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed" (Num. 26:59). Jochebed was 130 years old when she gave birth to Moses. And Moses himself was eighty years old when he stood before Pharaoh, as it says, "And Moses was fourscore years old when he stood before Pharaoh" (Ex. 7:7).

If we add up all those years, we get 39 (Joseph) + 92 (Levi) + 130 (Jochebed) + 80 (Moses) = 341 years. It seems like we've gone WAY over 210 years.

But the text does explicitly say: Behold, (the total is) 210 years in all. Where did we go wrong?

It is likely that some of these life spans are being used in a symbolic, rather than literal, way. We can also see that the text is trying to reconcile the 400 years mentioned in Genesis with the other information available in the Torah.

What Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer offers us isn’t necessarily a straightforward historical calculation, but rather a drash, an interpretation, that invites us to confront these timelines. It shows us how the rabbis of old wrestled with the text, seeking to find harmony and meaning within apparent contradictions. What do you make of this attempt to reconcile the numbers?

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