Our main purpose in life is to help others, and if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.
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“Balak slaughtered ox and lamb and sent to Bilaam and the princes who were with him.” (Bamidbar 22:40)
Balak sent for Bilaam, asking him to come curse the Jewish People. He promised much honor and wealth for this, and when Hashem declined to let Bilaam go, he was very upset. He kept asking Hashem to let him go until Hashem relented and said, “Go along with the men sent for you, but you can only say what I allow you to.”
Upon his arrival, Bilaam was not met with great fanfare. In fact, Balak didn’t welcome him into his home. Instead, he sent meat to Bilaam for a meal. How much did he send? Rashi tells us, “It was a small amount.” Though the terms, “cattle and sheep” often convey large quantities, various commentaries explain that he literally slaughtered ONE ox and when that wasn’t enough for Bilaam and the officers, Balak added a ONE sheep. In addition, he specified that it was to be shared by Bilaam with the officers, as Balak figured Bilaam would want to keep it all for himself.
Bilaam was not going to be insulted like that, and when he came to curse the Jews, he told Balak he needed to build seven altars and slaughter an ox and a sheep on each of them! This slight was going to cost him.
More than this, unlike Yisro who offered sacrifices to Hashem, and then invited Aharon and the elders to eat with him, Balak’s primary concern was feeding the people and offering to Hashem was barely an afterthought. We see the stingy nature of Balak in how he promised much and produced little; wanting so much for himself and yet unwilling to offer it. Only when Bilaam presented it as the only option did Balak go ahead with it. The truth is, they were two of a kind, each one only concerned with himself.
Despite this, Chazal tell us that in the merit of the numerous sacrifices he offered, Balak’s descendant Shlomo HaMelech (descended from Balak’s granddaughter Ruth) would offer a thousand sacrifices to Hashem when he built the Bais HaMikdash. How does this work? Despite his inherent stinginess, Balak showed that when he was very motivated, he could spend his money. For him, his selfish desires were his motivation. His granddaughter Ruth, though, turned this around. As we see from her interaction with her mother-in-law Naomi, Ruth’s focus was on others. “Where you go, shall I go” and so on, making Naomi the focus. As King, Shlomo HaMelech was also focused on others, namely his subjects, the Jewish People. A Jew is happiest when he makes others happy. Therefore, when it came to offering korbanos to Hashem, Shlomo was easily generous, for his greatest motivation was to serve Hashem and Klal Yisrael.
Imagine a box full of gold and diamonds. Inside this box there is also some straw and scraps of paper. If you were to ask someone what's in the box and he said “straw and scraps of paper” and you opened it to see for yourself, what would you say about this person? Probably that he is off the wall! How can he say that the box has junk in it when it is full of priceless items? A normal person would not even relate to the junk but rather say it is a precious box of valuables, even if the junk is the overwhelming majority and only a few valuables are buried inside.
Similarly says R’ Yeruchom, the Mirrer Mashgiach, the gemara says (Eiruvin 19a) that every Jew, even the worst sinners, are full of Mitzvos like a pomegranate is full of seeds. If so when talking or even thinking about another Jew, what fool can think of the bad in him? Are we completely blind to the priceless good deeds that he has done. In the face of those mitzvos, how ridiculous is it to even pay any attention the so-called atrocities that he has committed? No matter what, he is still precious and we should look at him in wise manner and stop being fools!
©2024 – J. Gewirtz
