Bilam Fell on His Face and Sold Balak a Trap

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The Seer Who Knew the Hour

Bilam son of Beor went down on his face in the dirt, and the words came. That was how it worked for him. Face in the ground, eyes open, and the sayings of God arriving in figures and riddles that had to be untangled afterward like knots in a rope.

Moses stood when the Voice came. Mouth to mouth, plain as one man talking to a friend, and he never knew the hour in advance. The Voice met him inside the Tent when it chose to. Bilam knew who was speaking to him and knew when the speaking was due, and the rabbis compared him to the king's butcher, the man who knows before anyone else what will be carried to the palace table that night and what the king is spending on it. Insider knowledge, and a price attached.

Heaven had put a prophet of that size among the nations so that no nation could ever stand up and say it would have listened, if only someone like Moses had been sent to it.

Seven Altars on Every Ridge

Balak king of Moab watched Israel come up across the plains the way a man watches an ox lick the grass down to bare ground, and he sent elders to Bilam with the fees for divination in their hands. Bilam saddled his donkey and rode. In a walled lane between two vineyards the animal shoved sideways and crushed his foot against the stone, because it could see the angel in the road with a drawn sword and its rider could not.

On the first height they built seven altars and Balak killed a bull and a ram on each of them. Bilam walked off alone to meet whatever would meet him, came back, opened his mouth, and blessed Israel. They tried a second ridge where only the edge of the camp showed. Blessing again. They climbed Peor, where the tents lay open below them rank by rank, and this time the blessing came out warm enough to call those tents beautiful.

Balak struck his hands together. "I called you to damn my enemies and you have blessed them three times running. Get back to your own place. The Lord has held you back from honor."

Come, I Will Advise You

Bilam did not leave empty. He turned back at the last moment with something that cost him nothing and required no prophecy at all. "Come," he said, "and I will advise you what this people will do to your people in the days to come."

The advice was four sentences long and every one of them was accurate. Their God hates harlotry. Those men are hungry for fine linen. Pitch tents along the road at the edge of their camp, and lay the cloth out where they can see it. Seat an old woman outside each tent with the goods in front of her, and a young girl inside.

Balak had spent bulls and rams and silver on a mouth. What he needed was a market.

Linen at the Edge of the Camp

The tents went up along the road at Shittim, close enough that a man could stroll over between chores. The old woman outside had the garments spread on a cloth. A soldier stopped to handle the linen and price it, and she sent him in to the girl, and he went in.

Nobody had to be cursed. Nobody had to be fought. The whole strategy was a trade route running past the edge of a holy camp, and it did not need a single prophetic word to work.

Israel Sat Down

Sitting is the word that gives these collapses away. When Israel made the calf, the people sat down to eat and drink and then got up to play. When Joseph's brothers threw him into the pit, they sat down to eat bread with the boy calling to them from the hole. At Shittim, Israel sat.

They came for the linen and stayed for the meal, and the meal was a sacrifice, and the sacrifice belonged to Baal Peor, and men who had crossed the sea on dry ground bowed down in a Moabite tent with their mouths full. The plague went through the camp and took twenty-four thousand of them before Phinehas came down the lane with a spear in his fist and stopped it in one thrust.

Bilam's mouth had never once managed to injure them. His mouth was not the weapon he sold. He collected on the advice and went home, and when Israel turned on Midian afterward, the sword found him lying among the Midianite dead.