#749: Bilaam the Consultant
Bamidbar Rabbah on Bamdibar/Numbers 22:29
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר בִּלְעָם֙ לָֽאָת֔וֹן כִּ֥י הִתְעַלַּ֖לְתְּ בִּ֑י ל֤וּ יֶשׁ־חֶ֙רֶב֙ בְּיָדִ֔י כִּ֥י עַתָּ֖ה הֲרַגְתִּֽיךְ׃
Balaam said to the ass, “You have made a mockery of me! If I had a sword with me, I’d kill you.”
Gimme Some Torah #749
Bilaam was basically a scammer, a con artist who promised to curse Israel even though he had no ability to get the job done. A midrash in Bamidbar Rabbah illustrates how Bilaam’s talking donkey spilled the beans about his crooked racket:
ל֤וּ יֶשׁ־חֶ֙רֶב֙ בְּיָדִ֔י—If I had a sword in my hand—This is analogous to a doctor who comes to cure a snakebite victim by reciting a spell. On the way, he saw a certain lizard and looked for a rod to kill it. Bystanders said to him: “Why do you need a rod to kill the lizard? We thought you could cure snakebite with your mouth.”
Likewise, the donkey said to Bilam: 'You say that you are unable to kill me unless you have a sword in your hand. How do you seek to uproot an entire nation with your mouth?' He was silent and did not find an answer. The princes of Moav began wondering, as they witnessed a miracle without precedent in the world.
Bilaam can also be compared to an unethical management consultant. A fascinating article in The Free Press suggests that many consultants (though not all) are neck deep in a scam that is about forty years old.
The essence of the scam is that consultants are hired to improve business operations but still get paid very generously even if they end up doing great harm to the business. For instance, the merger of AOL and Time was managed by a top of the line consultancy firm. Shareholders paid a heavy price, as the consultants’ decisions ended up costing the company 200 billion dollars.
In other cases, the consultants are remunerated handsomely to make conclusions that are patently obvious. For example, the article notes that Kraft hired a consultancy firm to figure out why customers were finding so many broken Oreo cookies in their packages. The consultants were paid tens of millions of dollars to make a not-so-shocking discovery, namely that the packages were being mishandled at the factory.
Bilaam was one of these unethical management consultants. Though he was to be paid a princely sum to curse the House of Israel, he had no choice but to bless it in the end.
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I am the rabbi of Temple Beth El in Somerset, New Jersey, and the author of The JPS Jewish Heritage Torah Commentary.