The biblical authors knew that Moses did not lead the Israelites into the promised land, but the question of why preoccupied them.

An offense against YHWH that explains the severe punishment of their exclusion from the promised land.

Targum Onqelos usually offers a straightforward Aramaic rendering of the biblical verse. The Palestinian Targums (=Targum Yerushalmi), in contrast, offer more expansive, midrashic renderings of the verse. Numbers 24:1, in which Balaam looks to the wilderness, offers us a further glimpse into a world with multiple Targumic traditions.

In a satirical account, Numbers describes how a local, non-Israelite Transjordanian prophet and diviner is forced by YHWH to bless Israel instead of curse them. Deuteronomy recasts Balaam as a stereotypical Mesopotamian diviner from faraway Aram-Naharaim, making the point that YHWH’s power extends even into the heartland of Assyria.

Using imagery of tents, gardens, and flowing water—themes associated with love and sexuality in the Bible and the ancient Near East—Balaam blesses Israelite women with fertility. The Priestly authors, however, invert this blessing to present Balaam as the instigator of the Baal Peor incident.

Several stories describe how the rabbis of the Second Temple period would force priests to prepare the ashes in the lower state of purity, tevul yom (immersed in water before sunset), and once even discarded ashes prepared in the stringent state of purity, meʿorav shemesh (after sunset), to demonstrate the law is not in accordance with the Sadducees. The Qumran halakhic text, 4QMMT, gives us the perspective of the other side of the debate.

Hint: The story follows the red heifer ritual, i.e., the laws of corpse contamination, and the death of their sister Miriam.

After contact with a corpse, a person must be sprinkled with a liquid mixture containing the ashes of a red heifer, together with cedar and ezov, alkaline plants that, when burnt, function as the key ingredients in a detergent.

Amos and Zechariah mention an earthquake in the time of King Uzziah. Its effects were uncovered in the excavations at Tel Agol in the Jezreel Valley: It turned the city, fortified for centuries to defend against the Assyrian threat, into a poor squatter town that could not recover.

Crossing Wadi Zered marks the end of Israel’s 38-year sojourn in the wilderness and their entry into the land. Why does its location differ in Numbers and Deuteronomy?

Describing the Israelites crossing the Arnon Stream into Amorite territory, the Torah quotes the Book of YHWH’s Battles that speaks of “Waheb in Suphah,” a phrase that appears nowhere else in the Bible. Many creative explanations have been given, but based on a survey on the ground we can identify it as the “Town in the Stream,” an ancient biblical town whose name had long been forgotten.

The oldest biblical sources see Balaam as a great seer, but as time goes on, biblical texts portray him in an increasingly negative light. The key to this shift lies in Deuteronomy’s attitude to Israel and gentiles.

Already in 1877, Marcus Kalisch, one of the first Jewish scholars to engage in the critical study of the Bible, noted that the story of Balaam’s donkey is a late insertion which contradicts the rest of the story, both narratively and ideologically. Indeed, in the main story, Balaam is a prophetic character to be respected, while the supplement lampoons him.

The route the Israelites take through the Transjordan in Numbers 21 is choppy: They are in the Negev then suddenly they are back in the Transjordan; they are moving south and suddenly they are north; they are in western Moab then suddenly they are in the eastern desert. Though traditional commentators attempt to tease out an overall route, it seems more likely we are looking at a palimpsest that includes contradictory versions of the story.

In Numbers 20, when the Israelites are without water, God tells Moses to get water from a stone, which he does by striking it, and is punished. Yet in Exodus 17, Moses does the same thing and the story ends positively. What is the relationship between these two accounts? Remarkably, R. Joseph Bekhor Shor says that they are two accounts of the same story.

If the people are thirsty for lack of water, why complain to Moses that they “have no grain or pomegranates”? Together with other textual anomalies, this narrative discontinuity suggests that interwoven into the water-at-Merivah story is a fragment from a different story: the missing opening verses of the non-Priestly account of the spies.

Ancient Jewish interpreters imagined Balaam as the prototypical Gentile seducer. This trope was used by John of Patmos, the author of the book of Revelation and himself a Jew, to polemicize against his rivals among the early Christians.

Contrary to the biblical account of the Israelite conquest and burning of Heshbon in Numbers 21, the archaeological remains of Tell Hesban (biblical Heshbon) demonstrate that it was not settled until centuries after the conquest and settlement period and not burned until over half a millennium later!

The Mesha Inscription describes Omri’s conquest of the mishor in the Transjordan, and Moab’s subsequent (re)taking of it, in the 9th century B.C.E. Reading Numbers 21 in conversation with archaeological findings confirms much of this and offers us a glimpse at the history of this region before the Omride conquest.

The Torah describes Moses building a copper serpent to heal the Israelites. According to Kings, Hezekiah destroys it because it was being worshiped. Archaeology and history clarify the religious and political meaning of this image.

The itinerary notes in Numbers 21 is a hodgepodge of styles and directions. Nevertheless, once we isolate each style, we find three separate itinerary lists, each from one of the standard Pentateuchal sources.

Several biblical and non-biblical texts describe encounters with flying venomous snakes in the Sinai and Arabian deserts. Egyptian iconography helps clarify what is being pictured.

The haftarah for Chukkat cuts off the end of the Jephthah story, ending on a triumphant note, with the defeat of Ammon. When looking at the whole story, however, we are presented with something very different. In Judges, Jephthah is a manipulative leader, who forces everyone’s hand, including God’s. Although his tactics lead to the defeat of Ammon, they also lead him to sacrifice his own daughter and to massacre thousands of his own brethren.

An ancient quote, preserved in Jephthah’s speech to the King of Ammon, gives us a clue into the methods of the Torah’s redaction and the status of pre-pentateuchal sources.

What we know about where he lived, the language he spoke, and the gods he worshiped.

Did Israel Cross or Circumvent Edom? Deuteronomy versus Numbers.

When Balaam and Balak were Independent Characters

And what can we learn by comparing it to another ancient book mentioned in the Bible, Sefer HaYashar (The Book of the Upright)?

The story of Jephthah’s daughter is famous as an example of child sacrifice, yet certain clues in the biblical text imply she may have suffered a very different fate.

In contrast to Descartes’ theory of animals as automatons, the Torah and rabbinic text express deep concern for animal suffering. One vivid example is the donkey’s rebuke of Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me?” (Num 22:28).

The Song of the Well, as recorded in Numbers 21:16-18, is only a brief excerpt. While many commentators assume that the song was naturally short, R. Yehudah HeChasid presents a radical suggestion that the song was actually cut from the Torah and placed in the book of Psalms by none other than King David.

The Bible pays little attention to the death of its female characters, writing only cursory death notices, or sometimes none at all. Second Temple period authors retell the Torah’s stories to give more pride of place to the death scenes of its heroines.

A New Reading of Psalm 95

Ezekiel 36 uses Priestly “purification” imagery similar to that of the red heifer ritual to describe God’s future reconciliation with Israel, inspiring the rabbis to choose this passage as the haftara for Parashat Parah.

A border dispute between Northern Israel and Moab is recorded independently in the Torah and the Mesha Stele. Comparing these accounts uncovers the underlying issues that the Torah is addressing.

A Pagan “Prophet Like Moses”