[Avodah] Bil'am - paid or unpaid?

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Mon Jul 22 12:37:32 PDT 2019


On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 07:50:34AM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: Was Bil'am paid for his sincere and hard-fought -- but ultimately
: unsuccessful -- attempts to curse us?

I answered the wrong question, thinking you mean "paid" as in
sekhar va'onesh, not did Balaq pay him. But I invested so much time
on research, I'm keeping it in.

(I was wondering why you went to CM rather than a straight "divrei
haRav vedivrei hatalmid, divrei mi shom'im?" Took me a while to catch
up.)

But at least Bil'am was smart enough to say in advance that the
payment couldn't be conditional upon success. While also planting
in Balaq's head the ballpark of "melo veiso kesef vezahav". Clearly
experienced in Middle Eastern haggling technique. (See 22:18)

Now my non-answer, about whether HQBH made Bil'am pay for his sin.

Bil'am died in Yehoshua 13:22, during Reuvein's conquest of Sichon's
lands (which in turn included the land Sichon conqured from Moav).

The pasuq calls him a qoseim. Sanhedrin 106a asks why, wasn't he an
actual navi? R Yochanan says that Bil'am lost his nevu'ah and continued
on as pretending he still had it.

On the next amud, Rav says that this death involved seqilah, sereifah,
hereg AND cheneq.

According to Gittin 56b-57a, when Unkelos bar Kalonikos (where Kalonikos's
mom was Titus's sister) considers converting, he raises some evil
people from the dead (including his uncle) to ask them information
to help his decision. On 57a he asks Bil'am. Among the things Bil'am
answers is that he is spending eternity "beshikhvas zera roteches".

Rashi says this is middah keneged middah for his idea about Benos Moav.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
Author: Widen Your Tent      and it flies away.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                          - Rav Yisrael Salanter


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