ספר במדבר

Numbers 23,18. “arise Balak and listen!” This ‎rather curious line may best be explained through a reference to ‎‎B’reshit Rabbah 82,8 where the Midrash comments as ‎follows on Isaiah 3,13: ‎נצב לריב אלוקים ועומד לדין עמים‎, “the Lord ‎stands up to plead a cause, He rises to judge peoples.” According ‎to the Midrash there, the verse needs explaining, as we ‎appear to have another verse (Joel 4,12) describing G’d as sitting. ‎The solution offered is that when G’d “sits” in judgment of the ‎Israelites He does so standing up, whereas when He judges the ‎nations of the world He does so while remaining seated. The ‎difference is in the amount of time devoted by G’d to that ‎judgment. When forced to do things while standing up, one tends ‎to try and finish one’s business so that one can sit down again. ‎When doing one’s work while remaining comfortably seated, one ‎is more likely to do things more slowly.‎When our sages offered this solution to the apparent ‎contradiction, they may have had in mind the verse according to ‎which the tzaddik is able to reverse G’d’s evil decrees. The ‎Talmud Ketuvot 111 views the word ‎ישיבה‎, as a more ‎comfortable position only if the seat has arm rests; otherwise ‎standing upright while able to rest one’s arms is a preferable ‎posture, (in the sense of “more comfortable.”) When G’d is ‎portrayed as judging the nations of the world while seated, the ‎meaning is that the throne He sits on has arm rests. When G’d ‎judges the Israelites, although doing so while standing, He has no ‎supports for His arms. This “shakiness” is what enables thetzaddikim to reverse evil decrees, as these decrees had never ‎been firmly rooted. In other words, we learn that curses never ‎have the kind of strength that blessings have. Bileam’s calling on ‎Balak to arise, was meant to undermine any curse which would ‎subsequently be issued against Israel. Israel’s righteous would be ‎able to reverse such curses.‎[I find all this somewhat irrelevant as the Jewish ‎people never knew of what Bileam and Balak had planned until ‎told about it by Moses. There were no Jewish witnesses to ‎anything which transpired in this portion until where the Torah ‎reports on what occurred subsequently in chapter 25. ‎Ed.]‎ ‎