Treasures in the Sand
for Parshat Balak

Beach combing the G'matriya Beach with the help of "Otzrot
Yisrael", one of the CDs of the "Responsa Project" of Bar
Ilan University.

This column has appeared for the past number of weeks.
Several times, so far, p'sukim from Parshat Balak have
matched G'matriya with various other p'sukim, calling our
attention to how very powerful Bil'am was, and how
formidable an enemy he could have been, had we not merited G-d's protection from him. One of the first Treasures in the Sand that I found, bears repeating on this note.

Compare Sh'mot 19:8 and Bamidbar 23:26 - VAYA'ANU, and all the People "answered" together... VAYA'AN, and Bil'am "answered"; VAYOMRU, and they said, VAYOMER, and he said to Balak...; KOL ASHER DIBEIR HASHEM NA'ASEH, all that G-d shall speak, we shall do, KOL ASHER YIDABEIR HASHEM OTO E'ESEH, all that G-d will say, that I will do. The similarity of wording leads one to make the following hypothesis: Our commit ment to do what HaShem tells us to do, in some way locks Bil'am into the same mode. He too, against his inclination, is only capable of doing what HaShem tells him to do. Had we not set that precedent, had we not made that commitment to HaShem, perhaps Bil'am would be able to act more independently, and would have been able to accommo date Balak, G-d forbid. The beauty of this particular pair of p'sukim is that the point can be made even without noting that they have the same G'matriya. That fact becomes the icing on the cake.


Bamidbar 23:1 and 29 are identical. Bil'am tells Balak to
build for him seven altars and to prepare for him seven
bulls and seven rams (as sacrifices). The commentaries tell
us that Bil'am was attempting to negate to effect of our
Patriarchs having built altars and offered sacrifices. But
the merit of Israel works in two directions - past and future. We often say that because Avraham did such-and-such, or Yitzchak or Yaakov, etc. therefore we are treated a special way by G-d, so too is it sometimes possible to say that in the merit of what we will do in the future, we are protected now and shown G-d's mercy.

Bamidbar 29:17 and 25 (interesting that there are two
identical p'sukim on this side of the coin too) deal with the first and fourth day of Sukkot (the other days have slightly different wording). We are com manded to bring a goat as a CHATAT (sin offering), aside from the daily sacrifice, its meal- offerings and wine of libation. The Chata'ot and the T'midim that we will be bringing in the Beit HaMik dash, protected us, so to speak, from Bil'am, Balak, and their many sacrifices. These p'sukim all have the same G'matriya (2823).

Bil'am's famous observation of the modesty and beauty of
the Camp of Israel, of the way we behave (are supposed to
behave) as a society, is recited daily as we enter shul —
MA TOVU OHALECHA YAAKOV...

Two p'sukim in T'hilim share the same G'matriya as MA TOVU, namely 1691. T'hilim 121:4 states that The Guardian
of Israel (G-d) shall neither sleep nor slumber. Perhaps we
can say that when we live up to the beautiful description
of MA TOVU, then we will merit round-the-clock Divine
protection.

T'hilim 130:8 says that G-d will redeem Israel from all its
iniquities. This too can be seen as a favorable consequence of our living up to the Torah's standards of modesty and proper social behavior.

Special thanks to the person who corrected my spelling
error, and in such a sensitive manner.

A general word of caution when it comes to G'matriya,
specifically, the homemade variety that will be appearing
in this Treasures in the Sand column. Don't read too much
into them. They are not meant to say something new. They
are meant to be a nice "numerical confirmation" of existing
ideas.

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