THE HARDEST WORD TO HEAR By Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

The story of Bilam, the pagan prophet, begins with a bewildering set of non-sequiturs—a sequence of events that seems to have no logic. First, the background. The Israelites are approaching the end of their forty years in the wilderness. Already they have fought and won wars against Sichon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan. They have arrived at the plains of Moab—today, southern Jordan at the point where it touches the Dead Sea. Balak, king of Moab, is concerned, and he shares his distress with the elders of Midian. The language the Torah uses at this point is precisely reminiscent of the reaction of the Egyptians at the beginning of the book of Exodus.