This week will be dedicated to lessons from the story of Balak and Bilaam, which we are supposed to remember every single day.
The Elder of Kelm, in his sefer House of Kelm (page 104) makes the following point:
Hashem warned Bilaam not to curse the Jewish nation, because they are blessed, then Hashem sent an angel to stop the donkey, and the donkey spoke.
At first glance this seems odd- why is there so much involved in stopping Bilaam? Why does the Torah describe all these events?
Why not just strike him with lightening?
Furthermore, one of the things that it says that we are supposed to remember is that God didn’t get angry during the time period when Bilaam tried to curse the Jewish people. The Gamara in Berachot (7a) describes to us that every single day, there is a moment in time (sometime in the morning) when God gets extremely angry, when the nations of the world starts worshiping idols. Bilaam knew when that moment was. He was planning to say only one word, “Kalem/Destroy them,” and the Jewish people would have been wiped out.
But during that period of time, God did not get angry- and this was a change in nature. That ‘anger’ was obviously something that was necessary in order to instill fear in the world (One of the reasons it says that the Jewish people sinned with the Midyanite girls after the story of Bilaam was due to this lack of anger.)
This is something the world needs, and God stopped it in order to prevent Bilaam from cursing the Jewish people. God changed nature. One might wonder- wouldn’t it have been better to put him to sleep or something like that?
In a Gemara in Berachot it mentions that a rabbi was being bothered by a certain heretic who wanted to use this technique to curse him, but God made him fall asleep every time. So why didn’t God use this technique with Bilaam? Or why couldn’t God just have taken away his brain power? They were a lot of things that God could’ve done to stop Bilaam. Why did He have to change nature?
It’s a very obvious question.
And the Elder of Kelm answers that Hashem wanted to show us, and our children, that we should not be afraid of a Ben Bechira/ somebody with freedom of choice. People sometimes get worried that a person with freedom of choice can impact them, but we shouldn’t be afraid of that.
En Of Milevado/ There is nothing else but God.
God said, “Don’t worry about it, leave it to me.” Bilaam could be awake, with his mental powers intact, and Hashem would prevent him from cursing us.
“And this is a beautiful explanation,” he says. We should not be afraid of it people. No one can do anything to us-Even a human being with freedom of choice.
At the end of the day, there is nothing but else but God, and nothing happens without God’s will. You have to remember that.
Amalek/ the Yetzer Hara likes to put doubts into our minds, but this is the bottom line- after all the dust settles, nobody can do anything to you unless God wills it so.
He further quotes the Gaon of Vilna that says that, “It looks like a person can do what he wants to do, but that is really not the case.”
This is also a pasuk from David Hamelech in Tehilim (118, 6)
ה׳ לי, לא אירא מה יעשה לי אדם
God is to me, I am not afraid of what man will do to me.
A Baal Bechira can do what he wants, but in the end, what happens is all up to Hashem.
A long time ago, about half a century ago, I used to watch Superman. As we all know, Superman was also Clark Kent. He had two identities, but he had to keep his real identity a secret. When someone shot him right in the chest and nothing happened to him, he took a coin out of his suit pocket to show that it wasn’t his powers that stopped the bullet, but rather, that he got lucky and the coin stopped it.
It’s a silly example that shows that someone can shoot a person, he can have something there to block it.
A person can choose to shoot, but whether the guy get killed or not is up to Hashem.
[And the fact that this is still in my mind after all these years goes to show that the silly things you watch on television never get out of your head, so beware]
Have a wonderful day.