Enemy Of Israelites Whose Words Are Recorded For Eternity In Bible Claims He’s Being Silenced

Bil’am laid the groundwork for his “silencing” claim with a warning that he will only speak that which YHWH endorses.

Shittim, Transjordan, January 20 – A prophet and sorcerer whose repeated attempts to curse the Lord’s chosen people came to naught now accuses the Almighty and the scribes who transcribe His Word of suppressing his message and stifling his freedom of expression, all while God transmitted to Moses every statement the man made in those attempts, with that document included in the lore that followers of YHWH will preserve and study in perpetuity.

Bil’am, son of Be’or, of Pethora in Aramean Mesopotamia, complained today that the powers that be are silencing him by refusing to allow his curses to come to fruition, even as the powers that be took painstaking efforts to produce a verbatim account of his pronouncements.

“On three occasions I pronounced sooth regarding Israel,” recalled the animal abusing, self-aggrandizing seer, “during which a divine spirit filled me and I spewed forth words of praise and, indeed, of blessing. Then the leader of Israel, at the behest of God Himself, bade him write down my every word and include the entire episode as a passage in their holy scriptures, to be preserved, revered, studied, and expounded till the end of time. This represents an unconscionable silencing of my right to express myself.”

Bil’am embarked on his efforts to curse the Israelites at the behest of Balak, king of Moab, whose lands lie near the people’s path on their way to the Promised Land after escaping generations of subjugation in Egypt. Balak, seeing the miraculous ease with which Israel dispatched the forces of the mighty Emorite potentates Sihon and ‘Og, and knowing he could not muster any comparable military opposition, opted to fight the Israelites on the spiritual plane instead of the Moabite Plains – unaware that in fact God had expressly forbidden Israel from attacking their distant cousin nations of ‘Ammon and Moab. The Moabite king dispatched emissaries to Bil’am to persuade him to undertake the cursing mission, with the latter choosing to interpret God’s refusal to allow him to go as an indication not that the premise of the mission itself displeases the Almighty, but that Balak must accord Bil’am much greater honor in making such a request. Midianite allies who had accompanied the Moabite emissaries grasped the charlatanry afoot and departed, while Balak decided to accommodate the seer’s conceit and sent a second, higher-ranking delegation, whom Bil’am received.

Observers noted that Bil’am appeared to lay the groundwork for his “silencing” claim at the outset of the doomed mission with a warning to Balak’s emissaries, then to Balak himself on multiple occasions, that he will only speak that which YHWH endorses.

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