A People All Alone
In this week’s Torah reading, the pagan seer Balaam is hired to curse the people of Israel, but every time he tries, he ends up blessing them instead. In the first of these blessings he says as follows:
How can I curse those whom God has not cursed? And how can I denounce those whom the Lord has not?
I see them from the mountaintops, looking upon them from these heights:
A people who will dwell apart, and not be counted among the nations.
(Num 23:8-9)
The phrase in the last line, “a people who will dwell apart” (an alternate translation is “a people dwelling apart” or “dwelling alone”) has a long history. It has often been taken as a warrant for Jewish separatism: intermarriage (exogamy), or any other form of intermingling with other peoples, is to be avoided because, as Balaam said, we are “a people dwelling apart.”
Sometimes this verse is cited in order to claim that we Jews are a people different by nature from all others. The book of Jubilees, written by an anonymous Jew in the second century BCE, says as follows:
All of the descendants of his [Abraham’s] sons would become nations and would be counted with the nations. But one of Isaac’s sons [Jacob] would become a holy seed, and he would not be counted among the nations, because he would become the portion of the Most High (see Deut 32:8-9), and all his descendants would fall into that [share] which God owns, so that they would become a people whom the Lord possesses out of all the nations. (16:17-18)
Here, Balaam’s words (in italics above) are cited in support of Israel’s inherently separate status: Jacob, the ancestor of the people of Israel, will become a “holy seed” (for this phrase in connection with intermarriage, see Ezra 9:2) and his descendants “would not be counted among the nations” because, unlike all other nations, the Jews will be God’s own, personal possession.
Targum Onqelos translates “a people dwelling apart” as “a people destined to inherit the world [to come],” while another ancient Aramaic translation renders “and not be counted among the nations” as: “they do not share the laws/customs of other nations.”
Elements of these understandings survive to this day: Balaam’s words are often cited, especially in modern Israel, as a way of saying that we Jews are altogether different from other peoples or nations. Indeed, I have heard this verse cited more than once in connection with another common sentiment, “The whole world is against us.” How could it not be against us, given our special and altogether separate status as “a people who will dwell apart”?
None of this, however, seems to be what Balaam really meant. He could hardly be talking about any actual, physical isolation, given the proximity of various other peoples neighboring the Land of Israel or living within its borders. Philo of Alexandria, the first-century Jewish commentator who lived in Egypt, certainly knew the geopolitical facts. He says explicitly that Balaam did not mean that Israel’s “dwelling place is set apart and their land severed from others.” Philo knew that this just wasn’t the case, neither in his own time nor for the centuries and centuries that preceded him.
Then what does “a people dwelling apart” really mean?
A great principle in Hebrew poetry is that each line usually consists of two halves, and the two halves are never unrelated. Often, Part B elaborates or explains Part A—reformulating it or carrying it further. That’s what happens in the case of Balaam’s blessing. Part B reads “and not be counted among the nations.” But what does that clarify?
Over many centuries, Israel’s little strip of territory has been surrounded by all sorts of empires. What Balaam is wishing for Israel in this passage (part of series of blessings) is what any soothsayer might wish a doughty little people just now in the process of becoming a nation: “May you stay independent and not be not be counted among the nations” that is, not annexed to someone else’s empire.
The various other interpretations cited above may indeed have fostered Jewish pride and sustained our people through the toughest of times. Yet sometimes Balaam’s intended meaning seems blessing enough: Just leave us alone.
Shabbat shalom!
