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alaam
Horthy. Nevertheless, he retained his position until September
5. Later he was one of the founders of a group of right-wing
deputies who sought to give a legal framework to the Szálasi
regime. Baky was sentenced to death by a Budapest People’s
Court and executed in 1946.
Bibliography: J. Lévai, Black Book on the Martyrdom of
Hungarian Jewry (1948), passim; A. Geyer, A magyarországi fasizmus
zsidóüldözésének bibliográfiája, 1945–1958 (1958), index.
[Bela Adalbert Vago]
BALAAM (Heb. םעְלִ ָ ּב ,םעְלַ ָ ּב), son of Beor, a non-Israelite
diviner famous for his effectiveness, enlisted by Balak, king
of Moab, to pronounce curses over the Israelites. The pronunciation
Balaam reflects the Greek rendering of the name
in the Septuagint. Balaam’s exploits are related in Numbers
22:2–24:25, known in modern research as “The Balaam Pericope,”
and traditionally recognized as a distinct literary unit
within the book of Numbers. There we read that the numerous
Israelites, encamped in the Steppes of Moab on their way
to the land of Canaan, were feeding off the land, causing great
apprehension in Moab. Balak despaired of driving them away
by force, and he hoped to achieve victory by means of Balaam’s
execrations. To Balak’s chagrin, however, Balaam refused to
succumb to his offers of reward, and surprisingly, pronounced
blessings over Israel instead of curses, predicting Israelite
victories. His orations represent some of the most beautiful
examples of early Hebrew poetry. Balaam’s firm obedience
to God’s will is viewed with great favor. Similar praise is expressed
in Micah 6:5, where Balaam’s role in thwarting the
design of one of Israel’s enemies is evoked as a sign of God’s
providence over his people.
In contrast, Balaam is seen in a hostile light in several
other biblical sources where he is mentioned. In a certain
sense, the derogation of Balaam begins in the Tale of the Ass
(Num 22:22–35), which mocks his reputed gifts as a seer (see
further). And yet, as the tale unfolds, Balaam falls into line,
and ends up obeying God’s instructions. The attitude toward
Balaam is decidedly unfavorable, however, in Numbers 31:8,
16, which report that Balaam’s counsel had led to Israelite
worship of Baal Peor, and that he was slain by the Israelites
together with the kings of Midian in the course of the war
against the Midianites. A resonance of the same episode is
found in Joshua 13:22, where, in addition, Balaam is referred
to as ha-qôsem (“the diviner”), as if to discredit him. In Joshua
24:9–10, within a narration of Israel’s history, we read that God
protected Israel, refusing to allow Balaam to curse the people,
The underlying assumption is that Balaam had intended to do
just that. Finally, according to Deuteronomy 23:5–6, the mere
fact that Balaam had been retained by Balak, king of Moab,
to curse Israel is adduced as a basis for prohibiting marriage
with Ammonites and Midianites (cf. Neh. 13:2). It is difficult to
explain this negativity toward Balaam against the background
of the Balaam Pericope. Rather than following traditional explanations
that Balaam’s allegiances changed, it is more likely
that subsequent Israelite misfortunes at the hands of neigh-
boring nations, with whom Balaam was identified, brought
him into disrepute.
Recent archaeological discoveries have added significant
information about Balaam. In 1967, a Dutch expedition
under H. Franken discovered fragments of inscriptions written
on plaster at a Transjordanian site named Tell Deir ‘Alla,
located about 5 mi. (8 km.) east of the Jordan, not far from
the northern bank of the Jabbok (Zerqa) river that flows into
the Jordan. In the Hebrew Bible this area is known as cēmeq
Sukkôt, “the valley of Sukkoth” (Ps. 60:8, 108:8, cf. Gen. 33:17,
Judg. 8, I Kings 7:46). Many of the plaster fragments were
restored in the manner of a jigsaw puzzle, and the resulting
“combinations” were published by J.A. Hoftijzer and G. van
der Kooij in 1976. Composed in a language similar to biblical
Hebrew, and dated in the late ninth to early 8th centuries
B.C.E., the inscriptions attest the name of a seer, blʿm brbʿr –
“Balaam, son of Beor”– for the first time in an extra-biblical
source of the biblical period. Previously, Balaam had been
known outside the Hebrew Bible solely from post-biblical
sources (Baskin 1983).
The Deir ‘Alla inscriptions relate how a certain blʿm brbʿr,
referred to as “a divine seer” (’zh < lhn), was visited at night in
a dream by gods who revealed to him that an impending misfortune
would devastate the land. The seer, greatly distressed
at this news, assembles his people to disclose to them what he
has learned. In these inscriptions Balaam is depicted as an heroic
figure, who strove to save his people and the land. In content
and style, the inscriptions noticeably resemble the Balaam
Pericope of Numbers, and other biblical sources as well, so that
any discussion of the role of Balaam in biblical literature must
henceforth take the Deir ‘Alla inscriptions into account.
The Name Bil‘am and the Identity of the Person
There are essentially two ways of parsing the name Blʿm: (a)
Bil+ʿam, whereby the component ʿam is a kinship term, and bil
would represent the divine name Bel, yielding the sense: “Bel
is my kinsman.” As such, the Hebrew/Deir ‘Alla name has been
compared with Akkadian Bill-am-ma and Amma-baʾli “Bel is
a kinsman,” or: “a kinsman of Bel” (HALAT 130, S.V. Bilʿam I).
(b) A name incorporating the verb b-l-ʿ “to swallow up, destroy,”
+ m, an affix that can be represented as åm (elsewhere
also ån and –ôn), and that characterizes the actor of the verb,
hence: “the swallower, destroyer.” Reference would be to the
potency of Balaam’s spells and execrations. This understanding
of the name gains support from its uncanny similarity to
the name of the first Edomite king, Belaʿ, son of Beʿôr, as recorded
in Genesis 36:32. This resemblance can hardly be coincidental,
and may argue for the identification of Balaam as
a nearby Ammonite, Moabite, Midianite, or Edomite by origin,
rather than as a more distant Aramean.
In fact, there appear to be two traditions concerning
Balaam’s homeland. One identifies Balaam as an Aramean,
an extraction explicit in the opening verse of his first oration
(Num. 23:7): “From Aram did Balak import me/ the king of
Moab – from the mountains of Qedem.” At the same time,
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