{"id":1,"date":"2017-06-13T14:27:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T18:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/70facesoftorah\/?p=1"},"modified":"2017-07-05T17:21:50","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T21:21:50","slug":"covering-the-eye-of-the-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/seventyfacesoftorah\/2017\/06\/covering-the-eye-of-the-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Covering the Eye of the Land (Parashat Balak: Numbers 22:2-25:9)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Rabbi
Rabbi Emma-Kippley-Ogman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

By\u00a0Rabbi Emma-Kippley-Ogman<\/em><\/p>\n

Parashat Balak opens with a fearful king dreading the arrival of the Israelite desert wanderers to his land of Moab. When he speaks to the leaders of neighboring Midian, Balak\u2019s fear refigures the approaching Israelites as grazing animals \u2014 he says (Numbers 22:4), \u201cNow, this assembly will nibble away everything around us as the ox nibbles the grass of the field.\u201d In a single verbal gesture, the king paints the migrants as both harmless ruminants and a destructive force to undermine the sustenance of his civilization. Through the lens of his own fear, Balak dehumanizes and dismisses while at the same time exaggerating the potential power of his perceived enemy. This is the rhetorical currency of oppressive movements throughout history\u2014to claim at once the ultimate worthlessness and the unfathomable power of the other.<\/p>\n

In Parashat Sh\u2019lach, the Israelite scouts who had returned disheartened from touring the land aroused the people\u2019s fear by speaking about how they thought they were seen: \u201cWe were in our own eyes like grasshoppers (chagavim<\/em>) and so we were in their eyes\u201d (Numbers 13:33). In our parasha, Balak confirms the scouts\u2019 account. In his first message to Balaam, to beseech the sorcerer to curse the Israelite people, Balak says of the Israelites: \u201cLook, it has covered the eye of the land (hinei khisah et ein ha\u2019aretz<\/em>) and it is sitting over against me\u201d (Numbers 22:5). That language is familiar from the plague of locusts in Mitzrayim, in which Moshe warns Pharaoh that those creatures \u201cwill cover the eye of the land (ve-khisah et ein ha\u2019aretz<\/em>), and one will not be able to see the land\u201d (Exodus 10:5). In contemporary language, Balak may have called the Israelites a \u201cticking time bomb\u201d \u2014 by referencing locusts, he gestures at an animal that is often harmless but can become devastating. Tobiah ben Eliezer (Lekach Tov, 11th<\/sup> c.) named the paradox emerging in Balak\u2019s eyes: locusts are weak and yet a king cannot stand before them.<\/p>\n

Balak\u2019s language adds a dimension to the Israelite scouts\u2019 expression of fear on entering the land \u2014 being seen as grasshoppers means not only being seen as insignificant, but also being feared as a purveyor of famine. In this encounter, as in our contemporary circumstances, the longstanding resident and the relative newcomer are mutually afraid.<\/p>\n

With the parallel drawn between Israelites and locusts, what then does it mean to cover the eye of the land? Targum Onkelos reads the verse in Exodus (regarding the actual locusts) as \u201cthey will cover the eye of the sun (veyachfei yat ein shimsha<\/em>),\u201d describing the experience of seeing locusts in flight \u2014 the density of the swarm darkening the sky and covering the sun\u2019s eye shape as seen from the earth. As several commentators point out, the Israelites migrating on foot would not block out the sky, so what is indicated here in Numbers must be something else. When he describes the Israelites as covering the eye of the land, Balak\u2019s vivid language prefigures the seeing and not seeing that will figure prominently in the story ahead; here that in\/visibility carries multiple dimensions of fear:<\/p>\n