GEHINNOM

a conversation in hell
by Joel Cohen
with Menachem Wecker

For those, and the memory of those, who will never know what hell might be like.

Cover Image: Gustave Dore, Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno (1857). Note: With this image, and
others throughout the book, the author does not hold the copyright and does not give anyone
permission to download and/or reproduce the works.

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 Table of Contents

Introduction……………………………………4

Characters….…………………………………..8

Cain………………………............................11

Korah…………………………………………….19

Saul………………………………………………..27

Balaam…………….……………………………..43

Miriam………………………………………..….79

Young Man…………………………………..108

Scriptures……………………………………..111

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 GEHINNOM

INTRODUCTION

If there is a hell, indeed any form of afterlife, no

human has ever been there and returned to this world
to tell us of it. No returnee to foretell what we might
encounter.

An afterlife, in whatever religion that describes one, is

typically the product of human imagination and
invention. This is
Note: Though this book makes the
so even if, as is
case that there are no descriptions
sometimes
of hell in Jewish texts, it
alleged, it is acknowledges the existence of
divinely-inspired. minor tractates of the Talmud, with
Scripture itself Kabbalistic origins, such as Hibbut
doesn’t actually Ha-Kever (the pains of the grave)
describe the and Gan Eden (Garden of Eden)
and Gehinnom (Gehenna), which
afterlife, other
do refer to particular punishments,
than with poetic
some reminiscent of Sisyphus and
nuance. Based on his colleagues, but these are hardly
this human mainstream Jewish texts.
creativity, we
have each come to believe that whether heaven is
physical or not, it is a glorious place.

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 In contrast, the venue of hell is unthinkably odious.
The concept of heaven, whether true to its existence
or reality, gives each of us comfort, hopefulness and
yearning for salvation. We see in it “a better
tomorrow,” after we have shuffled off the Hamletian
mortal coil. We would acquire there a final, lasting
reward – safe passage gained for our good conduct in
this lifetime.

The concept of hell, though, yields, in modern terms,

“general deterrence.” It is a tragedian’s device. It
reinforces the rewards for good conduct or at least
deterrence for bad done in the land of the living, lest
we calamitously “burn in the fires of hell.” And
whether or not there is pristine clarity to what one
might encounter if a decree or “sentence” of hell is
imposed, there surely lurks in hell a tragic
hopelessness, darkness and misery for those
condemned to it. The carrot and the stick, at bottom, is
the hallmark of all monotheistic religion.

The fires of hell which provide for “eternal damnation”

are strangely common to Judaism, Christianity, Islam
and even the paganism of Greek mythology. So
whether one reads the Book of Job, Dante’s Inferno,
the Qu’ran or the Odyssey, we encounter burning fires
and painful punishment in Sheol (or Gehinnom) of the
Old Testament, Gehenna of the New Testament,
Jahannam of the Hadith or the Hades of Greek
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 mythology. We don’t see in the “hell” described in
Hebrew, Christian or Islamic sources, however, a
tormented Sisyphus or figures like him. No one
endlessly and hopelessly rolls a rock up a mountain
only for it to fall back down from its precipice each
time. We see instead the horrors of seemingly eternal
punishment.

But is that what truly awaits those condemned to hell?

Is damnation about fire, excruciating heat, the torture
of physical pain? Or is it something else, a despairingly
painful existence that we can actually envision – or
using contemporary phraseology – or that we can
“relate to” in this lifetime? The existentialist
philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, published his
extraordinary play “No Exit” in 1944. In contrast with
what religion and religionists have articulated about it,
Sartre famously said there that “Hell is other people”
(L’enfer c’est les autre). Three characters constantly
harp at one another. Sartre thus describes how one
might experience “hell on earth.” He explains how we,
in the venue of this life, might better understand the
torture of an afterlife – even without the fire pits
imagined and perfected in our forebears’ belief
systems or conception.

This author’s Gehinnom finds its construct similarly.

The author, no expert in eschatology, has surely been
to neither heaven nor hell yet. So, in this Gehinnom,
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 five biblical characters of the Old Testament, along
with Satan (Hebrew for prosecutor) – religious legend
implies that his “throne” is there – find themselves
desperately alone, confined in a “dark, dank, forgotten
cave.” There, they hypothesize – or, indeed, boldly
pronounce – why their comrades are thus condemned,
sometimes from the perspectives of their own strident,
often destructive egos.

But, alas, they lack introspection. They have no ability

to truly recognize why they themselves are there. No
“mirror” helps them to objectively gain perspective
into their own conduct. Nor can they summon even
minimal remorse, a reality that led them to the cave in
the first place. And so, for their punishment, in
Gehinnom they will suffer a fate worse than death,
perhaps worse than the “fires of hell.”

Maybe, just maybe, that is hell – hopeless despair, an

incapacity to examine one’s own soul.

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 Characters

Cain Firstborn of Adam and Eve in the Garden of

Eden. When God accepted his younger
brother Abel’s sacrifice and rejected Cain’s,
Cain (named for woman “acquiring a man
with the Lord”) killed Abel (Hebrew for
“nothingness”). God placed a mark on his
forehead to protect him, and banished him
to East of Eden to be a wanderer.

Korah A son of the priestly tribe of Levi. Resentful

that Moses and his brother Aaron had
“taken on too much” for themselves, he led
a rebellion against them in the desert. Over
Moses’ concern over the rebellion, God
caused the ground to bury Korah and his
followers alive.

Saul First king of Israel. God became

disenchanted with him when Saul failed to
have the king of Amalek, Agag, killed with
the rest of his population, and chose David
to replace Saul. Saul became resentful of
David when he became a hero in Israel, and

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 attempted to have him killed several times.
He later “fell on his sword” when the
enemy Philistines were poised to capture
him.

Balaam A heathen prophet with great prophetic

skills, possibly on the same magnitude as
Moses See Midrash Sifre, Duet.
himself. King 34:10, which states that
Balak of the no prophet “in Israel”
Moabites arose like Moses, perhaps
offered allowing for a gentile
Balaam great prophet on Moses’ level.

wealth to
curse the nation of Israel. Balaam was later
killed at the direction of Moses for trying to
induce the men of Israel to engage in
promiscuity with Moabite women, in order
to turn them from God.

Miriam Elder sister of Moses who watched over

him as a baby. Later, a prophet herself, she
was resentful of Moses for abstaining from
relations with his wife to be constantly
ready for interaction with God if called
upon. Miriam complained to their brother
Aaron that she and Aaron were on the same
prophetic plain as Moses, but didn’t feel a
similar need to be so pure. God punished
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 her with leprosy which lasted for seven
days.

Satan The devil. Lucifer. Beelzebub. Either an

actual or allegorical figure in both the Old
and New Testaments. He either interacts
with God over good and evil to test
mankind, as in the story of Job, or
represents the evil inclination of mankind.
Monotheistic religion believes he/it must be
constantly defeated. In legend, he presides
over hell (or Gehinnom).

Young Man An unidentified young man who finds

himself in Gehinnom.

God The Creator of the world.

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 Cain Murders Abel

In the ultimate of sibling rivalry, the world’s first

son, Cain, killed his younger brother, Abel, after
God accepted the latter’s sacrifice over his own.
When God asked Cain where his brother was,
Cain famously responded, “Am I my brother’s
keeper?” knowing, all the while, that his
brother’s corpse was growing cold. God, of
course, is not impressed. He tells Cain that Abel’s
blood has already cried out to him, prompting
Cain to assume more apologetic airs. Cain, it
turns out, gets to live, but as a na va’nad, an
endless wanderer – perhaps the forebear of the
Wandering Jew. God also marks the exiled
murder – thus the Mark of Cain – for his own
protection, so Abel is not avenged.

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 PLACEHOLDER: Cain kills Abel. Source: JTS.

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 Cain Alone

CAIN I am here, alone.

Desperately alone in a dark, dank, forgotten

cave. No entrance, no exit. No semblance of
light. No body core to encase my essence
any longer. No pond to reflect the
hopelessness in my eyes. No way to see.

Does an indelible mark remain on my

forehead still? Or has it faded into oblivion,
forgotten to the world, as is this cave? Do I
even have a
Per Gen. 4:15, God puts a mark
forehead? on Cain’s head. Commentators
Does it offer a variety of explanations.
really Rashi says the mark was God’s
matter, if name. Gen. Rabba 22:12 says it
no one might have been leprosy, a horn
lurks in this or even a dog.
confining cave to exact revenge against me
for having been my brother’s killer?

What is this emptiness that surrounds me?

No one, not my father Adam, not my
mother Eve – not even God who rejected
me and told me of my wicked ways – told
me of this. No burning fires. No brimstone.
No pitchforks. No concentric circles of

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 sinners who endure excruciating torment
and pain. No one rolls a rock endlessly up a
mountain.

Maybe it’s God’s trick – an artifice that

commits me to endure existence in a locus
of sublime indifference. Just I, alone in an
indefinable vacuum.

I longed in my youth to be alone, without a

peer, until that pivotal moment when I
fatally struck my brother. Maybe this
aloneness is my personal heaven – an
existence isolated from an unwanted peer.
No one to be compared to. No God to judge
me!

Enter Satan

A VOICE Cain, you seem sullen. You present yourself

as forlorn, alone in a forgotten cave – but,
then, you take another tack: you’ve finally
achieved heaven. As if there is a heaven!
No, you’re not alone; you’ll never be in
sweet aloneness. Make no mistake; you’re
in hell, Gehinnom, or whatever you choose
to call it. Why would there be any other
place for the likes of you?

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 CAIN I can’t see you. Who are you? What is your
identity? And why are you here?

SATAN My name doesn’t matter.

CAIN Oh yes it does. Simple farmer that I was,

even I know that one is defined by his
identity – by
who we are, Just like the angel who
what we’ve wrestles Jacob in Gen. 32:29,
which doesn’t want to reveal
done. My
its name, demons (like the
father, Adam;
ones in the film The Exorcist)
my mother, don’t like to state their
Eve; the names, at least according to
serpent. Will Kabbalistic tradition.
they ever
escape what their actions will have meant
to the history of the world? Your name will
tell me how to assess what you say, the
worth of it – even if you see me only worthy
of Gehinnom.

SATAN The serpent, huh! Fine, but I have many

names – many names, indeed. Some call me
the Satan, some the Devil, some Diablo,
some Beelzebub, some Lucifer, some
Mephisto. To some, maybe I am simply the
essence of you – the essence of all those
who lived on earth! For I, no one else, have
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 made your fateful decisions for you! Maybe
I am the serpent!

But to me, and the world will surely come

to know it, I am God – God alone, despite
how that imposter being envisions Himself.
I control the imposter’s efforts at world
order. I rule over the universe. And no
matter how He tries to create good and
beauty in the world, He can never
accomplish that as long as I exist and my
will opposes it. That will be my place in the
world forever! People worship Him? Do you
understand, Cain? I am God! Just ask Job.

CAIN Ask Job? Job was a fantasy – a fiction,

nothing but a
See Bava Batra 15a for a
story about a
discussion about whether Job
man that
existed – and was indeed a
never lived, contemporary of Moses’ – or
or if he lived whether he, like the poor man
simply a man with a single lamp in the parable
who suffered Samuel told David in his rebuke of
horrible the king’s affair with Bathsheba,
was simply a metaphor. The 15a
catastrophes,
citation also features the
after which
argument that Moses authored
his life and the book of Job.
good fortune
were renewed. A philosophical story
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 written about the meaning of life and its
torments. What happened to Job, if it did,
was not because of an overt interaction
between God and you. But when I killed my
brother Abel, God did, indeed, come to me.

SATAN Job was a fantasy? How foolish. Just ask the

so-called God whether or not, when the sun
stood high in the sky, God made nothing
short of a wager with me, whether His
precious son Job would turn against Him
when things all went awry. Just ask the
same God who spoke to you when your
sacrifice blew up in your face that fateful
day, whether it wasn’t I who plagued Job.
And whether that “God” had the power to
ensure Job’s faithfulness in the face of
overwhelming torment. Or will God finally
admit that the power rested with me!

CAIN But wouldn’t it be more likely for me to talk

to Moses? Didn’t Moses author the story of
Job? I can’t summon God to speak to me,
but perhaps I can summon Moses.

SATAN Ah yes, Moses. You would have been able

to find him here, too, if I had wanted that.
Yes, Moses – God’s “favorite son” – wrote
the story of Job, but you won’t find Moses
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 here. I allowed him transit to a far different
station, for which I found you undeserving.

But so that you know, before I decided to

spare Moses this venue, who do you think
caused him to strike the rock when his
“always-loving” God told him instead to
speak to it, and then sadistically denied him
the promised land? Foolish Cain, was it not
me?

The fools who still walk in the land of the

living believe in a “free will” to carry out
their wishes, just like Job believed. Just as
you believe that you killed your brother
because you wanted to. Just remember,
though, it was me. Free will, indeed!

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 KORACH REBELS

Although Korach came from the priestly tribe of

Levi, tasked with the privilege of serving in the
Tabernacle, he felt that Moses and Aaron were
hoarding too much power. “Too much for
yourselves,” he and his band of followers, which
included the notorious Dathan and Abiram,
demanded of Moses and Aaron, “for the whole
congregation is entirely holy, and in their midst
resides God, and why have you made yourselves
princes on the congregation of God.” Korach and
his fellow rebels met tragic ends: some were
literally swallowed up by the earth, while others
were consumed by divine flames (the same fate,
interestingly, that befell Aaron’s sons Nadab and
Abiyhu).

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 Place holder. Image: JTS.

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 Enter Korah

A VOICE I hear mention of Moses – that Moses

wrote the book of Job. I truly wonder if that
were so. I knew everything that Moses
arrogantly took unto himself, even though I
was far more equipped to celebrate God’s
name.

CAIN Who are you? I did not hear your voice

before – though, strangely, I can see from
your few words what indeed you are.

SATAN Cain, your innocence astounds me. I

wouldn’t require
Gilgul, a Kabbalistic
the powers of
concept, refers to a
Satan to recognize
“rolling” – the Jewish
Korah’s voice, since equivalent of the
he is a mirror Buddhist concept of
image of you. In reincarnation, wherein
fact, in some ways souls of the departed
he is you. It is as if live again in new bodies.

your being has

transmigrated into his. He is your gilgul.

KORAH I am Cain? Cain is a common murderer, a

thug – a being who somehow sees this
“home” as heaven. But I, Korah, the son of
Yitzhar, the son of Kehath, the son of Levi,

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 am a glorious prince of Israel – born to the
purple, destined to perform God’s work in
the tabernacle.

You compare me to a murderer who in

pettiness was willing to kill his own brother
Abel? I, who was destined to offer exquisite
sacrifice to God for Israel? I, who belongs in
heaven, knowing such is my destiny? You
compare me to a vagrant who required a
mark on his forehead to deter vengeance
over his sacrifice of his own brother? You
are Satan, nothing less!

SATAN Much as you flatter me, Korah, the persona

you call God was righteous to bury you
alive. Despite what you might think, He and
I often agree on how to deal with those
who see themselves as godly.

KORAH You say God was right to bury me for having

challenged that egotist Moses, and for
seeing you as nothing more than a
scoundrel? God allowed this petty murderer
Cain to walk the earth after he gratuitously
killed his brother Abel, but buried me alive
for merely challenging the incompetent
Moses, who presented himself to the house
of Israel as a god? And you see this
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 murderer’s soul as having morphed into
mine?

CAIN Believe me, Korah, I am none too pleased

either by being compared to you. You
challenged God’s great prophet Moses, and
defied God in the process. You are nothing
like me. My act was wrong, true – but I
acted only when my blood boiled over
when God remonstrated with me. You,
however, deliberately sought anarchy –
threatening to destroy God’s nation with
your vile, serpentine tongue.

KORAH Oh please, Cain, you are nothing. Your

brother’s name, Hevel (Abel) ironically
means nothingness, but nothingness is you.
And I am not serpentine. That is our host,
Satan.

SATAN Interesting that you, Korah, refer to Hevel,

referring to the
“nothingness” that According to the Zohar and
his name other mystical traditions,
symbolizes. Hevel/Abel was resurrected
generations later in the
Interesting, since
person of Moses.
his essence
transmigrated into
the being of your arch-nemesis Moses.
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 KORAH I have had nothing in common with Cain,
and Moses has had no commonality with
Abel. Abel was a sad, unfortunate victim of
a murderous brother; but Moses was a self-
absorbed “insider” who took too much for
himself. “Transmigration” is a concoction of
occultists, nothing more.

SATAN So you reject the word of your chosen God?

KORAH No. I accept God’s word. I reject those who

propose to speak in His name – rabbis and
teachers, and the likes of Moses.

SATAN So, you accept what I say!

KORAH You’re no God. You’re just a bizarre,

counterintuitive, creation of God that He
set upon the world – a balancing device to
enable free will. God could destroy you in
an instant as He did me – although in your
case, for good reason.

CAIN But, Korah, my

According to rabbinic tradition,
“soul mate,” Korah asked Moses two
shouldn’t we questions: does a garment that is
all blue require blue fringes, and
find comfort in
does a study hall full of Torah
the worldview scrolls require a mezuzah – a
that Satan scroll hung on the doorpost?
maintains? If,
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 indeed, he can have caused us do the
treacherous acts for which we stand
condemned, doesn’t that mean that we
weren’t sinners at all, but rather pawns
employed by Satan for his sadistic pleasure?
Shouldn’t that be reason for relief – for
ultimate release from eternal punishment,
if that what this is?

KORAH Don’t delude yourself, as Satan deludes

himself. God alone create good and evil; but
for whatever divine reason, He simply
allows leaders, rabbis, even Satan, to see
their roles as somehow supernatural. I’m
here in whatever cave this only because
one “leader” who saw himself as
supernatural, couldn’t stand my challenges
– couldn’t answer my questions about the
law. Israel deserved a better leader, a
deeper scholar, than he. The great Moses
simply couldn’t abide that reality, and
beckoned God to destroy me.

CAIN As your voice gets louder in your passion

you sound, Korah, as if you would like to
have killed Moses.

KORAH No. You’re the

killer. Moses Korah could be referring to any of
several of Moses’ victims: the Egyptian
25 taskmaster beating a Jewish slave, or
the many Jews who had worshipped
the Golden Calf, or the giants Sihon
and Ogg.
 was a killer. Killing is detestable. Taking life
violates God’s Law. I’m not a killer. I fight
only with words, in the name of
righteousness. Nothing less, nothing more.
The desire to kill flows through the veins of
some, but most are able to exercise self-
control. Thus, I understand why you are
condemned, but still wonder why Moses
isn’t likewise here.

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 Saul’s Misplaced Mercy

Saul, the reluctant king who was “hiding amongst the

vessels” when the prophet Samuel was charged with
appointing him the Jewish monarch, never really
figured out how and when to stand up for his
authority. When it came to wiping out the Jewish
arch-nemesis Amalek, Saul chose to spare the king
Agag and the women, children and cattle. For this,
Samuel, in dramatic fashion, told him that God had
“torn away” the kingdom from his clutch. Saul
managed to learn the wrong lesson too little too late
when he chose to treat the innocent David violently,
jealous of the young boy David’s heroic triumph over
the terrifying giant Goliath. Luckily for David, God
thwarted Saul’s various assassination attempts. The
only one that proved fruitful was Saul’s decision to
fall on his own sword when the Philistine archers
found him in battle.

27
 Placeholder.

28
 Enter Saul

A VOICE Killing violates God’s law? Oh, if that were

only so, I would still be the king of Israel,
not a leader who fell on his sword escaping
capture and torturous death in a cave of
another sort.

CAIN Who is this confessing failed king of Israel?

If a king of Israel anointed by God has
joined us, how can this be Gehinnom?

SATAN The mighty fall hard. Too difficult for you to

understand? Don’t you know King Saul’s
actions that warranted this fate?

SAUL Cain, I merited this fate only because I

refused to kill! God wanted me to kill but I
wouldn’t, even in His name.

CAIN For the life of me, I don’t understand what

you say. I killed and that’s why I’m here.
You failed to kill and that’s why you’re
here?

KORAH Even the great Moses would have trouble

with that irony.

29
 SATAN You see it as irony – not a sadist’s plan to
confound the world?

KORAH Your plan, or God’s?

SATAN Don’t you understand? He, whom you refer

to as God, is only a deputy who pursues and
accomplishes what I choose not to veto.

CAIN But, still, I can’t comprehend why this

anointed king of Israel was dethroned for
failing to kill.

SATAN Saul, shall I tell, or shall you – much as I

would wish to show another abject failure
by a God who believes he chooses so
wisely?

SAUL I can, but my account is what I see through

the prism of my own eyes.

I didn’t ask to be the King of Israel and,

initially, God didn’t want a king for the
people. He feared a king’s arrogance. But
when the Israelites asked for a king to be
anointed, and though the Prophet Samuel
begged God to deny them one, God chose
me. Why he asked Samuel to pour the flask
of oil over me I’ll never know, but the two
short years of reigning over Israel were
30
 steeped in horrific battles with our
enemies. During those battles, though, I
never pleased God.

SATAN Please stop this self-indulgence. Everybody

understands; you didn’t deserve to be king,
and you proved yourself a weakling.

SAUL Will you allow me to continue?

When during a battle at Gilgal the soldiers

began to disband and Samuel was delayed
in his arrival, because I had not supplicated
before God I offered a burnt offering.
Samuel was late, but told me that I had
acted “foolishly” – although never why I
was foolish – and had not kept the
commandments of God. Right then, with
nothing more, Samuel said that God found
me to be a failure and had chosen another –
“a man after his own heart” – in my stead.
It was the end’s beginning for me.

My failure was to sacrifice to God, and for

that he chose another to replace me. Why
be a leader if that is the reward? I enter
heaven if I remain a pauper, but go to
Gehinnom if a prince?

31
 KORAH You don’t understand. You lead, you
become accountable. Either God, or the
princes of Israel, should challenge your
inadequacy. That’s the way it is – the way it
must be.

SAUL But that wasn’t quite it, notwithstanding

the ease of your thorny criticism. You look
at leadership as an outsider, your jealous
nose inwardly pressed against the Tent of
the Meeting.

The end of my reign came when my troops

and I were confronted with Israel’s
perennial enemy – Amalek. Yes, God told
Moses to blot it from the face of the earth.
So when we came to the city of Amalek, my
troops destroyed its entire populace.
Except, I took pity on Agag, Amalek’s king. I
allowed him life, along with his fatted
sheep, cattle and bulls. Yes, I allowed Agag
to exist in chains, even though he was an
enemy. But that’s how God dealt with me –
deciding it was over for me.

KORAH Saul, you took pity on a sworn enemy of

God. God almighty, how do you choose
leaders? First Moses, then this! Are you
listening, Cain?
32
 CAIN Why don’t you just let him tell his story, and
withhold your warped perspective on
leadership?

KORAH You’re one to talk. Your omnipresent

answer is to kill!

SATAN I love this, live for this.

SAUL To continue, taking Agag into captivity

wasn’t enough. Nor was apologizing sparing
Agag. After Samuel remonstrated with me
over choosing pity over God’s dictate,
Samuel released Agag from his chains, and
brutally killed him at the sword’s edge.

I never saw Samuel again, but well knew

that my kingship was over. And I knew right
then that upon death I would find myself
here for showing pity to Agag – the same
pity that God did not show me. (Though, I
do wonder if Agag is here too.)

I see myself as having been a good man all

of my early life, likely why God selected me
to be king. And likewise, I see clearly,
though, that if I had never been king, I
would now be among the good and decent
– not in a place fit for murderers and rebels
against God’s chosen leader.
33
 KORAH You’re so self-absorbed.

In any event, you see me as properly here

because I rebelled against Moses; although,
in your own telling, you rebelled against the
direct order of God. Still, you say I belong
here, not you! My friends, this is Saul – king
of Israel!

CAIN But isn’t Saul right – his “sin” was in not

killing?

SATAN Saul tells his story his way, he admits. Just

as you do yours. He seeks subtle excuses his
conduct. He spared Agag out of sympathy,
though God told him: “kill” – and nothing
less.

Saul was unsympathetic to all of Amalek,

but sympathetic to its king. How can that
make any sense?

You, Cain, you tell your story as if to say

that you killed your brother because God
provoked you – God, you say, made your
“blood boil over” – not because you
decided to kill your brother. But in both
instances, God’s and yours, strangely,
neither of you see my fateful role in causing
your actions.
34
 KORAH You had no role! You’re just an insect who
hovers only to irritate those you encounter,
as you do now.

SATAN So why did you end up here, if I did

nothing?

KORAH I ended up here because Moses simply

arrogated too much for himself and his
brother Aaron, and I called Moses on it.
God Almighty
Fierce rabbinic debate
didn’t want His
abounds on the question of
prized leader to
whether the earth’s jaws
fail the same swallowing Korah and
way he failed company was a creation of
when Pharaoh God’s during the days of
first dismissed creation, or whether Moses
him. And so, invented the punishment and
God later played along.
rather than see
more failure, he
acceded to Moses’ urging to bury me alive
with my followers – men who recognized
his inept leadership.

And just remember, it wasn’t God’s idea

that I die that way. It was Moses’. In
sympathy, God acceded to his wish.

35
 In your imperious arrogance, Satan, you
argue that you caused God himself to bury
me. It doesn’t satisfy your ego to say that
you control the conduct of man. Now you
control the conduct of God himself? Is there
no limit to your arrogance?

SATAN This for a man buried alive, abandoned by

his own sons!

You are fortunate indeed that this is not an

asylum with burning fires and sadistic
tortures. For I It’s worth noting the
have no limits to rabbinic statement that if
the torment I can Satan or the evil inclination
impose on those is overpowering you, take
who defy me. him/it to the study hall.
Food for thought for those
The only reason I
who hope to joust with the
don’t strike out devil.
against you for
your remarks is your “talmudic” joust that I
myself love. It’s the kind of joust that
caused you to confront Moses with inane
and insipid questions about the law,
theology and belief only to catch Moses off
guard, nothing else. It’s the kind of joust
that will bury you again even here.

36
 SAUL Whatever you are, Satan, take no comfort
that I’m here due to you. For surely you did
not cause me to spare Agag. He was spared
because God and Moses taught me mercy.
Imagine – exercising mercy caused me to
end up in Gehinnom with you! And
consider, just consider, my “sin” in letting
Agag live, given God’s own decision to let
Pharaoh live when He exterminated all the
first-borns of Egypt on that fateful night of
Passover, but not Pharaoh.

SATAN You compare yourself to God? But, more

important, I have nothing to do with you,
none of you, being here? Really? Are you
saying, Saul, that the story of Job is
inauthentic, that Moses didn’t accurately
report what God had divinely told him? Do
you say, Korah, setting aside the hatred you
show to Moses, that the story of Job is
untrue – that Moses merely concocted a
worthless drama?

Because if you believe in its authenticity,

you must believe that God, indeed, did ask
me in the presence of his angels to test his
ostensibly “faithful” servant Job. That he
was a wealthy man who directed his
children to offer sacrifice daily, against the
37
 mere possibility that they had committed
blasphemy that day. Such a holy man, that
God was willing to test his fealty to God, at
my hand – asking me to cause Job every
torment short of death.

And I did. I caused the enemy Sabeans to

kill his servants; a fire to burn all of Job’s
sheep; the Chaldeans to kill all of his
camels; and while Job’s sons and daughters
dined, I pushed a great wind across the
desert causing his house to collapse, at
once killing each of his seven sons. If not
enough, I then afflicted all of Job’s body
with boils, causing him endless agony.

Read the Book of Job, my friends in hell!

CAIN But remember, Satan. Job remained faithful

to God, and God rewarded him.

SATAN You simpleton, though so facile in your

thinking, Cain. Didn’t you say, just a short
while ago, that the story of Job is merely a
fiction?

I’m sure the other miscreants under my

spell who occupy this cave, don’t see it the
same way. Isn’t that right, Korah? Your
excellency Saul? Don’t you recognize, can’t
38
 you admit, that Job did exist and that God
did ask me to test him with all means of
suffering?

ENDLESS QUIET

Your silence, gentlemen, is deafening.

SAUL I do believe that Moses is the greatest

prophet of all, and that Moses’ Torah is a
Torah of truth. Still, I can’t believe that a
perverse force as you can cause all the
sinful conduct in the world. You told Cain
earlier that maybe you are in fact he, Cain,
that maybe you are all of us – and I can
accept that. And maybe, that’s what Job is
really about, but only that. Your role in the
world order is allegorical and metaphorical.

KORAH That would be something, if true. You’re the

king of Israel, so you’re scholarly enough to
conclude that the story may indeed be a
fiction. But, still, the great prophet
composed a text that is a fiction. Nothing
more than a fiction, designed to persuade
Israel that something untrue is true – that
isn’t real, is real. That Job was a good man,
remained a good man, despite all the perils
that befell him at the hands of Satan.

39
 CAIN Can’t you release your animus toward
Moses for just an instant, and see beyond
that?

KORAH Must I continue to listen to you? If I could

see your face now, it would still be covered
with the black smoke that covered it when
God rejected your puny sacrifice so long ago
near the beginning of time.

SAUL Why don’t you just leave him be? God

rejected him when his brother’s sacrifice
was better, more giving. No Law helped
watch over him. He reacted badly, but why
not show Cain some pity? He at least admits
what he did.

KORAH Cain’s a killer, nothing less. And you’re a

coward, nothing more. When you were
cornered by the Philistines, after your sons
were slain at Mount Gilboa, the Philistine
archers terrified you. The king of Israel,
terrified! And so, coward, you fell on your
sword. No decency, no strength, for the
king of Israel?

SAUL I fell on my sword. That makes me a

coward?

40
 KORAH Are you intending to be serious? You first
told your armor-bearer to “Draw your
sword and stab me with it, lest the
uncircumcised stab me, making sport of
me.” And when the armor bearer wouldn’t,
you fell on your sword. You fell in suicide.
You belong here simply for that act that
defied God’s law – not to mention your
tortured effort to claim that your death was
accidental. You say you’re in hell for
sacrificing to God? You belong here for
being a coward!

SATAN Saul belongs in hell only for not admitting

that I pushed him down on his sword. And
Gehinnom, or whatever you wish to call it,
is for those who refuse to recognize me.
You will never find the likes of Job here. He
knew exactly what my role was in his
misery.

SAUL Your self-indulgence amazes. “Coward” that

I am, I still willingly confront you – a
worthless apparition that “killed” me.

You can’t possibly admit that my suicide, as

you like to call it, was designed to prevent
the infidels from torturing not Saul, but the
king of Israel. You can’t understand that a
41
 king stands for his people, that if the enemy
tortures the king, it symbolically tortures
each of his subjects. That I would wish to
prevent such a catastrophe – a nivul
ha’meyt as the bible calls it – for the
children of Israel is, inscrutably, not within
your ken. You can’t understand what the
likes of a Goliath enemy can do to a people.
I was too big to fail!

SATAN Oh, yes, Goliath – killed by the adolescent

David. I momentarily forgot about David,
and his role in your demise. Ha. Ha. Ha.

42
 Balaam’s Curse

A curser-for-hire, whose ill words evidently could

actually spell harm for the enemies of his clients,
the Midianite Balaam is commissioned by Balak,
the Moabite King, to curse the Jews and prevent
them from conquering his country. Balaam toys
with Balak’s emissaries at first, but after telling
the messengers that even if Balak promised “his
palace packed with gold and silver,” Balaam still
could not proceed without God’s blessing, he
decides to accept Balak’s job offer. God and an
angel (which leads his donkey to speak) warn
Balaam, but he doesn’t heed and ends up
blessing the very targets he hopes to curse. In
perhaps the ultimate irony, one of Balaam’s
curse-blessings is a cornerstone of the daily
morning prayer of Shacharit.

43
 Placeholder. Image: JTS.

44
 Enter Balaam

A VOICE Such strife among the chosen people. Not

only they, but do I hear among us its anti-
God also? I am saddened indeed. How can
this strife exist? Indeed, “How goodly are
your tents o’ Jacob, your dwelling places, o’
Israel, stretching out like brooks, like
gardens by a river, like aloes planted by
God, like cedars by water.” This dwelling
place seems bereft of goodliness.

KORAH Who is this poet of poets? Who is this

faceless apparition who cries out “O’
Israel,” as his voice drips with irony?
Precious King Saul of Israel, who is the
interloper? Cain, first born in the garden,
who only has the capacity to rationalize his
overpowering vengeance, pray tell who has
joined the cave, ostensibly to create peace
for us?

SATAN Korah, Korah – great scholar whom you see

yourself as. He who joins us now is my most
prized creation: the greatest prophet
besides Moses himself: Balaam. A man,
who, although he didn’t accept God as did
Moses, spoke to God, communed with God,
directly. Your only connection with God was
45
 when he buried you alive. Balaam was a
prophet of God, not a backstabber as are
you.

KORAH Balaam, the miscreant magician, spoke to

God directly. And so you see him as your
creation? The mute, vagrant, murderer who
sits in the corner there also talked to God.
Hagar, the envious heathen who mothered
Ishmael, talked to God. Everyone willing to
subordinate themselves to God talks to him.
The prostitute on the side of the road can
talk to God.

Small surprise that Balaam, who even

Moses had the courage to condemn to
death, could
Here is not the place to detail the
talk to God. prolonged debate between
This, even biblical commentators of the
though he degree to which, if at all, biblical
caused figures were bound by the law
Moabite before the revelation at Sinai.
Suffice it to say that both sides of
whores to
the dispute are represented
lure Israel to
many times over.
promiscuity.
Indeed, even, you, slithering figure that can
only crawl through the dirt, talked to God.
When the books of the Torah are closed,
will God no longer talk to man? Is that the
46
 meaning you take from what you have
come to learn?

CAIN Korah, you acknowledge that I spoke to

God. But yet you can’t admit that I did not
have God’s Law before me when I walked
the earth. Do you accept that there was no
law in the garden that condemned the
killing even of a brother? Do you
acknowledge that I wasn’t even an Israelite
– that my father and mother weren’t
Israelites, but yet spoke to God?

SAUL You, Hagar and Balaam are aberrations.

God speaks to the chosen people. Those
who reject God, like the Philistines, are
God’s enemies. They only hear from God
only at the edge of his sword!

KORAH Hear, hear – the king of Israel finally shows

some backbone.

SATAN Korah, Saul, you believe God doesn’t

interact with the uncircumcised? Do you
believe that I don’t speak with God? You
see the world as a perfect harmony for
those who don’t follow the law of Moses,
because they don’t have to deal with God,
and only me? Balaam is my greatest

47
 creation precisely because he proves that
God and I rule the entire world, not just
those who view Sinai as the totality of
everything.

BALAAM But, still, Satan, you see me as your

creation. You see me as a force for evil. You
proudly see me as evil because I was bold
enough to turn Israel toward the Moabite
women. Men of great stature in Israel, men
without whom the children of Israel would
not exist, turned to women born of the
uncircumcised: Joseph, Joshua, even Moses.
But my action was so alarming, because the
women I invoked were Moabite? Such
hypocrisy on the part of Moses!

KORAH It’s not that you turned them to the

Moabite, but your reason. You plotted to
destroy the house of Israel, nothing else.

More important, you did it because Balak,

king of Moab, feared the Hebrews, and
commissioned you to curse them. You were
willing to because Balak offered you great
wealth, hardly incidental to your actions.

BALAAM So easy for you and Saul to demonize me as

evil incarnate, just like the rabbis have tried

48
 to do over the millennia. They pick and
choose the bible’s words about me – but
yet their daily prayers begin with my words:
the “goodly tents of Jacob.” Words begin
the daily liturgy, but first uttered by the
incarnation of evil?

SAUL People aren’t all evil or good. I am here,

having sinned. But was there no good in my
life?

BALAAM So, Saul, you do see me as having been a

good man.

SAUL I see you, like all Although some English

men, capable of translations render Num.
good, as in those 23:5 as saying the Lord put
words you a “word” in Balaam’s
mouth, the Hebrew word
uttered. But yet
davar could also signify a
you chose them
thing, perhaps a bit placed
for evil. I see your in his mouth, which would
words describing be ironic in light of the
the goodly tents of talking donkey.
Jacob as divine,
but they misrepresented your intent.

BALAAM And, so, when I told Balak that I would not

curse the children of Israel, I intended evil?
If you, Saul, were called upon to decide who

49
 went to heaven and who to hell, heaven
would only be occupied by you – and
maybe not even you. I risked death at
Balak’s hands when I refused to curse Israel,
but I am nonetheless evil?

SATAN Why do you so resist such branding? If God

with whom you, a heathen, spoke so
intimately, commanded Moses to kill you,
doesn’t that prove you were evil? If God
wants someone killed by the sword, even I
persuaded him to, doesn’t that establish
the person’s evil?

BALAAM I don’t see God has having “authorized” my

killing, because I was evil. Rather, I see it as
having stood in the way of a plan that God
had to destroy Midian and Moab, to
somehow “perfect” the world in some way.

But again, I resisted, time and again, Balak’s

urging that I curse Israel. If all Israel –
indeed, all the world – listened to God each
time they were asked to do evil, as I did
each time, there would be no caves like
this. All the departed souls would be with
God in heaven.

50
 Satan, your arrogance about your status in
the world order aside, I do belong in heaven
– if there is indeed a heaven! Maybe,
finding myself here though, there is only
Gehinnom in the afterlife. But then again,
maybe my insouciant donkey finds himself
in heaven.

CAIN What is this about your donkey? Your

donkey in heaven?

BALAAM Cain, did the Torah end for you the day you
died?

When Balak pressed me to go to curse

Israel, an angel of God appeared armed
with his Donkeys, which are of course the
sword. He emblem of the tribe of Issachar,
stopped me symbolize animals that shoulder
from even burdens, which could refer to the
going, burden of the law, and thus be
though I heroic and righteous indeed.
Alternatively, some Kabbalistic
intended to
sources note that the root of donkey
honor God’s in Hebrew chamor closely resembles
demand the word chomer, signifying the
that I not mundane and the material.
curse Israel.
I first did not see him – does any man really
see an angel? – yet my donkey did. I thrice
51
 beat my donkey until he opened his mouth
and he asked why, faithful as he had been, I
would beat him. Then, an apparition came
to me – the Torah describes him as an angel
– and warned me against cursing Israel.
Was this a dream? Did my donkey actually
speak to me? Did an angel? Either way, I
didn’t curse Israel – but nonetheless find
myself here.

SAUL Are you saying that you find yourself here

because you didn’t curse Israel, o’ great
prophet of the uncircumcised? And are you
trying to say that when the Torah says that
God opened your donkey’s mouth to speak,
that was false?

BALAAM No I’m saying that something stopped me

from what God saw as evil. And still, I am
condemned to Gehinnom – whether it was
a talking donkey or military angel. So one’s
good actions don’t seem to matter at all to
your God. His test seems to be whether it
took God’s agents – maybe the donkey and
the angel were Satan’s counterparts – to
make one see the light of day. If that’s the
test, caves like this are likely filled with
everyone who ever walked the earth.

52
 KORAH Balaam, you should adhere to self-loathing,
rather than self-pity. You’re a spineless,
heathen enemy of God.

SAUL Amen.

BALAAM But yet he chose me, not either of you, as

his prophet. He chose me to communicate
with of all the people of the world. Whether
he spoke to me face to face, as purportedly
he spoke to Moses, or simply in an
apparition or dream, does it matter? He
buried you, Korah, and caused you to die,
Saul, at the hands of Israel’s enemies.

SAUL And you, Balaam, you died peacefully of old

age? You didn’t die at the edge of Israel’s
swords?

BALAAM Yes, I died – but because Moses wanted me

dead, like he wanted you dead, Korah.
Maybe you have more in common with me
than you can admit.

KORAH The only thing we have in common lies in

our common enemy. Just as Saul and
Goliath had a common enemy.

SATAN You suggest that Moses was a common

enemy, but you can’t admit even to yourself
53
 that maybe I am the enemy. That I wanted
Saul dead. That I wanted you dead, and
both violently.

KORAH And why would you want me dead?

SATAN Why? Because I don’t like you! Can’t you

even bring yourself to imagine why
someone, some being, wouldn’t like you?
Why even God, whom you claim to obey,
wouldn’t like you?

KORAH I can understand why you wouldn’t like me,

but not God – your opposite.

SATAN But can you understand why Moses

wouldn’t like you?

KORAH Surely I can understand: Moses was envious

of me and my wisdom.

SATAN Just like Moses was envious of you, David

was envious of Saul; Abel was envious of
Cain; and Moses was envious of Miriam.
You, Korah, would turn the world upside
down because you can’t perceive life’s
realities.

SAUL Satan maybe you’re right about Korah – but

you basically see it as though you created

54
 God, rather than vice versa. You would
probably opt to see the dead buried upside
down, so that they could stride more
quickly to their personal hell. And you
would probably opt for hell for the good
people on earth, as if hell is the preferred
existence in the afterlife.

CAIN But why is this hell? Isn’t hell the misery we

encounter during life?

I killed my brother, yes. I was punished for

it. Korah was punished for his. Saul was
punished for his. But, obviously now, we
gained no absolution through the
punishments imposed during life.

Nowadays people are punished by death or

imprisonment for their sins – maybe, one
now calls them “crimes.”

But I was punished each day I lived from the

moment God confronted me, or held a
looking glass to my face. No earthling ever
killed me to avenge what I did to Abel. Still,
I walked the earth in misery and fear all my
life – aimlessly wandering the landscape
East of Eden, after God banished me from
the Garden.

55
 KORAH Cain, you killed your brother when his
sacrifice was accepted by God and yours
rejected, but still you present yourself as a
“victim.” God should have destroyed you
right then. Your appalling evasion – “Am I
my brother’s keeper?” – should alone have
cinched it.

SATAN Ah, “My brother’s keeper.” My finest hour –

a hopelessly guilty man trying to evade
guilt.

KORAH You now explain how God should punish

mankind?

SAUL Satan, maybe it wasn’t really God, after all,

who challenged the arrogance of Job, saying
– “Where were you when I laid the earth’s
foundation; Where were you when the
morning star sang in unison and all the
heavenly beings shouted; Did you ever in
your life command the morning, or teach
the dawn its place; Have you come upon
storehouses of snow; Were the gates of
death revealed to you; Have you seen the
gates of the shadow of death?”

56
 It wasn’t God, Satan, it was really you! The
world should come to know that you, you
alone, are the master. Don’t you think?

SATAN Intriguing, Saul. The dethroned, suicide king

now tempts me, the supposed serpent. He
asks me whether I am really God, after all.
He asks me whether it is I who chose my
playthings here, only to bait you until the
end of time. He wonders whether the
aloneness that Cain had hoped for was
overruled by me simply because it suits me
– and whether I have the power to
condemn simply for my sadistic
amusement. He wonders if it amuses me for
each of you to despondently wonder why
others, more “deserving,” don’t also find
themselves forgotten and alone in this cave.

And Saul asks whether, at day’s end, the

greatest pain for each of you is “Why me?”
Why did Satan – or is it God? – choose me,
despite my value to the history of Israel?
Why does Cain, so important to the lineage
of the world, find himself here? Why must
Korah, despite his brilliance, his priestly
standing, sacrifice to me, rather than to
God? Why must Balaam, glorious prophet,
bow to me, a slithering, despicable serpent?
57
 Misery does love company. Remember
that, Cain.

BALAAM Satan, you say you condemned Cain to this

pit, but not his mother Eve whom you
beguiled. She caused your offspring to crawl
the earth, and man to labor by the “sweat
of his brow.” You condemn this worthless
fool, Cain, but not his mother Eve who
caused our exile from the Garden?

KORAH Balaam, prophet of the uncircumcised, you

want Eve here, but not Cain’s moronic
father Adam? Adam one can understand,
but Eve? Women only exist for man’s
pleasure. It is Adam who belongs here for
listening to her!

CAIN Leave my parents be. Leave them to heaven

where they belong. Did they not suffer
enough? It is worth noting here that
They lost Hibbut Ha-Kever, mentioned
Abel, and above, records that after
then lost me death, the soul is instructed to
when I was attack its parents (for allowing
it to sin) – a reversal of the
banished.
fifth commandment. Any soul
Without that refuses is attacked itself.
them, the

58
 populace of the world would never have
existed.

KORAH Oh, the good son is with us, after all. He

worries about family. Forget that he killed
his brother.

SAUL Leave him be. No Law from God forbad

murder when he killed. Bring here Goliath
instead, who tormented and killed my
subjects. Where is Goliath?

KORAH Incredible, forgot Goliath. The truth is, Saul,

murder was indeed forbidden when you
tried to kill your own son Jonathan. Did you
forget? Do you really want Goliath’s
company here – wouldn’t that remind us
who killed him, what that extraordinary
warrior – wasn’t it David, your majesty? –
meant to you?

SAUL Korah, maybe you are the serpent. You

speak of why a man might lash out against
his own son because of a perceived
betrayal. But, now, you propose to lash out
against me.

Still, you leave Simeon and Levi immune

from your Gehinnom list, although they
routed and murdered a whole people
59
 because their sister Dinah had been
kidnapped and raped by just one man,
Shechem. Satan, your ally Korah seems
untroubled by mass murderers. He sees no
need to condemn them to this regime.

BALAAM It’s excruciatingly clear to me that Satan

makes his Gehinnom choices with wild
abandon. Where is Jacob who extorted his
brother Esau’s birthright, and betrayed
their father’s trust? Is Jacob’s conduct
condoned in the afterlife because he’s a
Hebrew?

KORAH What a fraud you – you spoke moments ago

of the “goodly tents of Jacob,” but now lay
yourself bare. Why do I bother? But what
about my esteemed cousin, the high priest
of Israel, Aaron? He escaped She’ol because
he was Moses’ voice before Pharaoh?
Aaron created the Golden Calf in the
shadow of Sinai – yet his soul is presumably
aloft in heaven. Why? Tell me why,
murderer?

CAIN Yes I killed my brother, but 10 brothers of

Joseph – coldly plotted in the hearts to kill
him. Angered by Jacob’s special love for
Joseph, they threw him into a deep, desert
60
 pit to die. Yet they are heralded as princes
of the tribes of Israel. But yet no place in
hell for men who knew the Law but were
unanimously willing to kill their brother. Yet
I’m here!

And if killers belong here, what about

Pinchas? He saw Zimri son of Salu, prince of
the house of Simeon, consorting with the
Midianite woman, Cozbi, at the tent of the
meeting. Without the warning required
under the law of Moses, Pinchas simply
took his sword and ran them through. Even
though Moses was there and knew what
was happening, Pinchas saw no need to
seek Moses’ approval.

KORAH Pinchas was a hero, you thug. The effete

leader of Israel, Moses, stood by with his
sheath bare. If I cannot be in heaven for
having shamed Moses, I am warmed that at
least Pinchas evaded the wrath of God’s
little friend Moses. Saul, too, could have
learned from Pinchas.

SATAN I have stood by with enjoyment. Instead of

finding a way to emerge from this cave – as
if there is one! – each of you finds reasons
for others to partake in the torture. Your
61
 only pleasure lies in the displeasure of
others. Simeon and Levi beside me. Goliath
in my stead. Jacob’s sons for their bad
intentions. Aaron for the Golden Calf.
Pinchas for stopping Midian’s blasphemy.

And since time is endless, each of you will

find a way to fill this cave with each man
and woman who has walked the earth – no
one lives in the expanse of time without a
deadly sin at his doorstep. But, still, none
of you seeks heaven. All you seek, in your
pathetic disenchantment, is to share your
“life” with others who seemingly evaded
this Netherworld.

My great pleasure is the endless harping

that makes you even worse than you were
in the “land of the living.” To give you a
simple measure of happiness, I could tell
you that many darker, forgotten caves
occupy the subterranean regions of the
netherworld, filled with forgotten, but
deserving souls. Just to say that would give
you the kind of hope denied you by the very
meaning of Gehinnom. But since cruelty is
my motto, you will never know if such caves
exist or house the souls that your

62
 spitefulnesses would wish to invite to join
us.

KORAH Satan, God must have himself been a sadist

to have created something like you.

SAUL Blasphemer you are, Korah. I suppose your

willingness to thusly take in vain the name
of God comes from a confidence that
nothing you do here can make your lot
worse: that is, you may curse the very name
of God, because your infinite despair has
already reached bottom. You find sanctuary
for yourself in an existence in hell.

KORAH Saul, you took your own life and find

yourself in hell. What worse can have
happened, Saul? Are you afraid that you will
endlessly wander – like our friend Cain once
did – if you now take God’s name in vain?
Can your existence be worse? Cain?

CAIN So very worse.

I aimlessly walked the earth, but at some

level hopefully – believing that I might gain
absolution for killing Abel. I felt, somehow,
that the pain of looking endlessly over my
shoulder for the avengers would somehow
accomplish a “release” or salvation in an
63
 afterlife. But to wander again with no such
possibility? Too much to bear.

BALAAM You are all fools. No physical body encases

me any longer. But it wasn’t my body that
called up the spirit of God while I lived. This
devil believes that he confines me here, and
thus I can no longer invite to my midst the
God who communed with me on earth?
Isn’t God here too? Does the infinitely
arrogant “devil” believe that he is the moon
to God’s sun – that he alone presides here?
That the “all forgiving” God can’t push
through to the depths of She’ol, to make
things worse – or, for that matter, better,
by ridding us of this satanic merchant of
underworldliness?

SATAN Just try to summon God. See if you can

climb up a ladder to escape me. See if any
human being who has ever been here has
returned to earth, or gone to heaven. Your
magician’s garb suited you well in the
desert, but it is only a costume here. You
will be here until the end of time – bereft of
the costume, bereft of any power. Call upon
your God, Balaam, I implore you!

SAUL His God? He has no God. He’s a heathen.

64
 BALAAM Oh – God belongs exclusively to the house
of Israel? I can’t have worshipped God, as
did Moses? Esau couldn’t worship God? The
Moabites couldn’t bow down? We all
weren’t created by God? Is that right, Saul,
Korah? Maybe that belief is why you find
yourselves here.

(SOTTO VOCE)

SATAN Can God truly realize my pleasure here?

Can he possibly imagine that these men

here for their final reward can’t even now
lay behind them the petty strifes? They
cannot accept the reality of being prisoners
in the same boat – a boat that requires
allegiance to one another in order to defy
me. They “survive” only on discord.

Having endured discord in life should have

readied them – that their earthly existence
was only a prelude to this. But, no! I am,
indeed, in heaven!

BALAAM Great serpent, I thought I heard you to

murmur, but couldn’t hear your words or
meaning. Did you mean to hide them from
us?

65
 SATAN You can never know my true meaning – it’s
too opaque for who you are. Nor do you
seem to recognize your own realities or
limitations. You seem to think you know
why you find yourselves here but, still, you
don’t see why you awakened the spirit of
my “inviting” manner.

BALAAM You say that I don’t understand my

presence here because, as a “heathen,” I
tried to turn the Israelites to promiscuity? I
don’t understand being here because a
donkey or an angel needed to stop me and
God – or, you say you – was angry that I had
even begun my journey when Balak told me
to curse Israel? Remember, I was a prophet,
not a fool.

KORAH And, I don’t understand that I’m here

because Moses hated that I could so easily
best him before Israel?

SAUL And my indecision when called upon to kill

Agag caused me this?

CAIN And, lastly, simple tiller of soil that I was,

even I can realize that I reacted in anger
(maybe like Moses himself in Egypt), when I

66
 killed. And that I did so because I couldn’t
“kill” God who rejected me so emphatically.

SATAN Cain, you wanted to kill God, and you

offered Abel as a sacrifice in substitute?
Maybe I should have brought Pharaoh’s
wise men here. At least they could decipher
your mysterious understanding of the world
order you project. At least they could
understand the limits of human capacity,
when God’s finger – indeed, the devil’s
finger – was pointed at them. Maybe, Cain,
your sins are even worse than I imagined. I
wonder if your intended victim, God,
realized how badly you imperiled Him.

KORAH Laughable. I told you all there was no hope

for Cain.

SAUL Can’t you understand that the ingenuous

Cain speaks poetically, much like my
successor David? Cain didn’t intend to kill
God. He only lamented his rejection to the
depths of his soul, and he cries out now as
does a poet. But, curiously, Korah, you find
no hope for Cain, but you do for yourself?

KORAH I too, ironically, use the word poetically. But

interesting that you insert David – your

67
 “successor” – into the fray. What are your
feelings of David?

SAUL David? An extraordinary king, an

extraordinary man – indeed, my son in law.
A great warrior, a great poet, a great king –
a man clearly destined to be the forebear of
the messiah.

BALAAM Saul, I am the magician. You, though, don’t

have the capacity to pull a rabbit from your
hat, to make black white, to make love out
of hatred.

SAUL Is not all that I say true – great warrior,

great poet, great king of Israel, forebear of
the messiah?

BALAAM True, all. But Korah asked your feelings

about David. You explained, however, the
ineluctable facts about a man that anyone,
excepting maybe the Philistines or
Amonites, might say about David. Your
recitation of facts without “feelings”
suggests that your feelings create
discomfort for you.

SAUL Why would I not want the messiah to

68
 come forth from David to finally end this
day in my existence, giving me hope that I
would not have to share eternity with the
wretched likes of you? That I might escape
too the presence of Satan, impotent as he
is.

CAIN Is that it, king of Israel – no discomfort?

SAUL What about you Cain? You say you’re here

because you killed your brother Abel, but
you say your barbaric assault on him was
just a substitute for your “poetic” assault on
God himself.

Still, you say nothing about Abel. You say

nothing to admit that you hated him for
what God did to you. No hatred? Did you
not blame Abel for God’s rejecting you? You
say that Joseph’s brothers were worse –
that they belong here because they were
truly angry at Joseph. But you admit
nothing.

CAIN Why do you taunt me? I’m here, hopelessly

here. I offer no excuse – I killed my brother.
There. What do you want from me? You
were the King of Israel. Even in those two
short years you earned the love and respect

69
 of Israel. All I earned was God’s rejection
and condemnation to Gehinnom. I have
lived in a Gehinnom since the moment I
struck my brother. Yes, I walked the earth
while my brother’s body lay in the grave.
But what life was that for me? You were the
stand bearer of Israel. Israel applauded you,
bowed to you, admired you. I had nothing –
ever. Can’t you leave me alone?

KORAH I told you he was nothing.

BALAAM But who are you, Korah? You say you’re

here because Moses simply couldn’t take
your taunts. You’re here because he wanted
you dead and buried – or is it that he
wanted you buried and dead? You tell us of
Moses’ ineptness – you the greater scholar,
the better leader. But is that it – as a prince
of Israel, you wanted “better” for your
people?

KORAH Sure, I wanted better for the people. Just as

I would have wanted better if I lived at the
time of Saul. I would have wanted Saul
dethroned also, and I would have attacked
him too, even at risk of being killed by a
man like Saul who was willing to kill his own
son Jonathan.
70
 BALAAM And that’s it? Your scathing attacks against
Moses were solely because you were a
rebel who sought
“public good,” Indeed, Rabbi Joseph B.
nothing else? Bear Soloveitchik’s famous
essay on Korach calls his
in mind, though I am
revolt a “common sense
now stripped of my rebellion.”
robe, I am a man
who communed
once with God. You can’t fool me with the
evasions that might succeed with a lesser
protagonist.

KORAH My scathing attacks against Moses were

warranted. They were designed to teach
the congregation that Moses was fallible,
that he had arrogated too much for himself
and his brother Aaron – that we are all
God’s people, each with the capacity to
hear God’s voice.

BALAAM I don’t believe you! I don’t believe that you

were simply a “public servant” who needed
to bring to heel an obsessive dictator.

KORAH Do I care if a man, killed by the swords of

the house of Israel for his malevolence,
believes me? What a fool you are, Balaam!

71
 But more important, explain how you feel
about Moses?

BALAAM How do I feel about the man who had me

killed? I don’t turn the other cheek. Korah,
how utterly stupid. A man buried by the
same man who had me killed, wonders how
I feel about Moses. Simple: I hate him for
the narrow-mindedness he showed me, and
his envy of me because my prophetic skills
eclipsed his.

SAUL You hated Moses because you had greater

prophetic skills? Bizarre! What did you ever
prophesy? Did you prophesy that you would
end up in Gehinnom?

BALAAM Touché, Saul. Yes, I did. Prophecy isn’t

about telling the future, much as ignorant
men might like you believe. It’s about one’s
“special relationship” with God. And though
Moses did not have my prophetic skills, he
too surely knew that he would never enter
the promised land. He didn’t need to be me
to know that.

The way God speaks to prophets tells us our

future, without needing to tell anything.
Because of that intimacy which Martin

72
 Buber will later call “I-Thou,” I know my
future until the end without God telling me
a thing. You, each of you, Saul, Korah, Cain,
suffer a different torment – the despair of
not knowing what lies in store for you –
whether fire pits, ferocious lions,
reverberating thunder squalls within an
echo chamber as this, a plague of locusts, or
more of what occurs now. I, in contrast,
know my future and am thus, master of my
destiny. You don’t and aren’t. You ask if I
have ever prophesized anything? What you
would give to be in my shoes right now!
Moses’ envy of me cannot possibly
compare to the torment in your minds right
now.

SAUL Moses envious of you? Are there five books

of Balaam? Did you receive the Ten
Commandments from God? Did you lead
the Exodus? Your “special relationship” with
God notwithstanding, great leaders,
including you, fell by the wayside at the
hand of Moses. You talked to a donkey who
pressed you to a wall!

BALAAM Your litany of Moses’ accomplishments is

true. But do you say, too, that merely
because of one’s accomplishments, he is
73
 incapable of envy? That there cannot be a
part of him that makes him weak, insecure,
imbalanced, inadequate? Moses’ Torah says
that Moses was the most humble man who
ever walked
Some commentators say that
the face of the Moses, when he penned Num.
earth. Maybe 12:3, which calls him the

that “humility” humblest of men, left a letter

out so he wouldn’t actually
was a synonym write his own praise.
for insecurity?

KORAH Indeed, maybe he had much to be humble

about – humble that he wasn’t me; that he
didn’t have my intellect; my ability to
engage the house of Israel; my disputatious
skills.

SAUL Your hubris, Balaam, yours Korah, are

astounding.

KORAH If my hubris astounds you, then perhaps

you didn’t deserve to be king of Israel.

SAUL Really? Perhaps God, too, was envious of

you!

BALAAM Saul, you always want to reverse the reality

of human interaction – as if Hagar was
envious of Sarah for being the wife of
Abraham, not Sarah envious of Hagar for
74
 having first given birth to his son. You
would see Esau envious of Jacob, not Jacob
envious of Esau for actually deserving the
birthright. Rachel envious of Leah for having
first married Jacob, rather than Leah
envious of Rachel for having been the true
love of Jacob. Joseph envious of his
brothers for having been younger, not they
envious of him because of Jacob’s special
love for him.

SAUL But aren’t they all envious – don’t each of

them see something in the other that they
want, for which they hate the other? Don’t
they, each of them, suffer from the deadly
sin of envy? Don’t they each covet
something possessed by the other?

KORAH You mean like Moses coveting the

prophetic skills of a heathen magician?

CAIN My gilgul soul mate, Korah, at last you seem

to abandon your comradeship with Balaam.
Your horrific hatred of Moses no longer
glues you to Balaam who holds the common
bond you share – that is, blind, dripping
hatred for Moses.

75
 KORAH That we both despise Moses, Cain, is
meaningless, as meaningless as the reality
that Goliath’s mother would despise both
David and Saul. The tautology – “the enemy
of my enemy is my friend” – is just that.
When the two-front battle is over and
victorious fellow armies return to their
respective homelands, they bid adieu to
their temporary comrades-in-arms, only to
plot battle now against each another. Isn’t
that right, Saul?

SAUL You are right, Korah. We are enemies –

comrades-in-arms for just one moment.

KORAH Of course, I am right, but do not deny that

Balaam’s animus toward Moses is deserved.
But, still, I wonder if Balaam would agree
that I, surely better than Moses, could have
climbed to the heights of Sinai, timing it so
that the nation would never have needed to
ask Aaron to mold a Golden Calf. The House
of Israel would have been confident in my
return – unlike Moses.

SATAN I hear whimpering in the distance, and

much as I enjoy the discord I create in my
midst, the sound seems to be the
murmuring of a woman in pain.
76
 KORAH Lord and master of Gehinnom, do you not
know whose sound you hear?

SATAN You suggest, Korah, that you would also

perform better than I, ruler of Gehinnom?

KORAH Spare us. Who joins us?

77
78
 Miriam’s Slanderous Tongue

Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, who saved her

youngest brother’s life by placing him in a basket and
floating him on the Nile (only to have Pharaoh’s
daughter discover him and adopt him as her own),
made a name for herself when she led the Israelite
women in song after the parting of the Sea of Reeds.
Tambourine in hand, she sang, “Sing unto God, the
exalted one, for He decimated (Egyptian) horse and
rider in the sea.” Later, though, Miriam’s and Aaron’s
jealousy got the better of them, and they shared
libelous words about their brother. “Has God,
perchance, spoken only with Moses?” Miriam and
Aaron wondered aloud, questioning the unique
nature of Moses’ status as a prophet. “Has He not
also spoken to us!” God punished Miriam with
leprosy, and she had to wait outside the camp for
seven days.

79
Place holder. Source: Wikipedia.

80
 MIRIAM I am Miriam, daughter of Yocheved and
Amram, sister of Moses and Aaron. I can no
longer stand silent. Your fierce attacks on
Moses and now Aaron are too disquieting.
What did they do to cause such disdain?
You have no basis for jealousy of them.

They took you from the land of Egypt; they

prayed for your soul; they beckoned God
for food and water in the desert. And all
you can do is despise, degrade and
besmirch their good names.

I did not save the baby Moses in the

bulrushes along the Nile to find even in the
bowels of Gehinnom, so long afterwards,
that a son of the house of Levi would still
engage in this bestiality toward the chosen
of God! This, indeed, is my hell. And your
sickening display is yours.

KORAH I am jealous of nothing and no one. But if I

were jealous, I would follow the very
teaching of God. Did he not teach us often
of a “jealous” God? Are we not to follow in
his ways? Did God suffer from insecurity
that the gods of the heathens were more

81
 powerful? But, still, God is El Kanah – a
Jealous God.

Miriam, kindly dry your tears; though I

cannot see them, I perceive them. I hold no
grievance against you. I don’t hold you
responsible for your brothers. But please
remember who I am. And understand why I
was able to muster the throngs, the princes
of Israel, to rebel against Moses even
though he portrayed himself as the closest
thing to God. Remember, too, that it was I
who knew all the interstices of the Torah. I
am not a simple agent commissioned by
God to carve the law on a stone face.

BALAAM “Heathen” as you prefer to call me, Korah. I

can easily clearly see the limits of your
understanding. You see a “jealous” God
who asks you to follow his ways – but you
sadly misconstrue the meaning of
“jealousy.” Am I incorrect, Miriam?

MIRIAM Thank the Lord, Balaam, you and I never

met face to face in life. I need not ally with
a whoremaster to defeat the vengeful
Korah. Moses wasn’t saved by the Nile for
his sister to ally with a man who would, if
he could, seduce the men of Israel to the
82
 whores of Moab. I would even rather
encounter Pharaoh, than you.

God is “jealous” of the house of Israel. One

is jealous of what he has, envious of what
others have. God
The Hebrew word for jealous,
jealously protects the as in jealous God, happens to
house of Israel, be the same root used to
because it “belongs” to describe Pinchas’
him, it is of him. assassination of Zimri and
Jealousy isn’t always a Cozbi, the Moabite princess.

pejorative – one can be

jealous of one’s dignity, one’s honor or
here, one’s people.

Yes, Balaam is right, Korah. You are not

jealous of Moses’ leadership of the house of
Israel. It doesn’t belong to you. It never will.
You are motivated by something different –
you are a spiteful man who hates because
of what you couldn’t have, couldn’t be. And
we don’t need God to explain why. Your
poison, the poison you spew at my
brothers, has a far different motive than
what you claim. You hate them out of envy,
nothing less – your hatred was because you
were left outside the Tent of the Assembly.
As if God couldn’t determine who wasn’t
worthy!
83
 BALAAM It seems, Miriam, that I am, indeed, an able
counselor – I have appropriately buried
Korah’s misimpression in the ground beside
Korah. Indeed, See the Talmud, Sotah
Pharaoh, you may 11a, for a description of
know, earlier the role Job, Jethro and
listened to my Balaam may have played
advice when he in Pharaoh’s decree.
asked me what to
do with the Hebrews in Egypt. He ignored
the advice of Jethro and Job, and kept the
Hebrews as slaves.

KORAH We saw, indeed, the brilliance of your

advice – the annihilation of the Egypt we
knew; the death of Egypt’s warriors at the
Sea of Reeds. Wondrous advice. You must
proud.

BALAAM And you believe that God and I didn’t

commune over that advice to harden
Pharaoh’s heart? That’s the difference
between Moses and me. God told Moses
what to do, but asked me what to do.

MIRIAM So clear, Balaam. You are the paradigm of

envy. You turn everything upside down to
try to lead one to believe that you couldn’t
possibly envy Moses, because he was so
84
 obviously your inferior. Be clear – my
brothers had no superiors but God himself.

BALAAM Foolish woman, watching carefully along

the Nile River, playing a tambourine at the
side of the sea. Maybe your ineptness lies in
the common bloodline you share with
Korah.

KORAH I begin to want to escape from any

commonality with that woman.

SAUL Have you both no decency toward the

woman who risked her life to save the
redeemer?

MIRIAM Your Majesty, I appreciate your gallantry,

but I need no help to deal with these
scoundrels. It is easy to see why God would
raise them only to destroy them – and I
suspect I would see that even if I were not
also a Prophetess.

Korah simply hates. He doesn’t know why,

and won’t admit why. He sees women as
only there for “pleasure.” Maybe he gets
pleasure from attacking me. One wonders
where his wife is. I heard tell that it was she
who goaded him to attack my brothers.
85
 Maybe, now, he hates her too. Maybe she is
somewhere else laughing that her husband,
who hates women, is stuck with another in
his midst who sees through his cover.
Moses’ wife, Zipporah, was helpmate, not a
collaborator as was Korah’s, and maybe
that was too much for Korah. Always a
woman behind a man, for better or worse.

KORAH No one has ever run my life, nor ever will.

MIRIAM No, not at all! You can’t see reality, because

you’re probably still pulling the dirt out of
your eyes.

BALAAM Isn’t she right, Cain? Always a woman who

moves a man to good or bad – in your case
bad?

CAIN What do you mean?

BALAAM Really? Did no woman cause your hatred

for Abel that made you want to kill him?

CAIN I told you that when God rejected my

sacrifice, I wanted to “kill” God – Abel was a
simple, plausible substitute.

86
 BALAAM But no female? Didn’t both you and Abel
have twin sisters whom you were each
intended to As usual, Balaam is onto
marry? And something, particularly,
didn’t you love the reference in the
Abel’s twin sister Midrash, Genesis Rabba
22:7, which brings up the
and wanted to
twin sisters (as well as
have her, to other potential sources
marry her, but of the strife).
Abel stood in
your way? Didn’t you simply find your love
for her too much to bear, and so you killed
him to have her? Admit it. Your envy over
what belonged to another man caused your
downfall!

MIRIAM A woman “belonged” to a man – Abel was

entitled to her? Are women possessions?

KORAH Please, Miriam – did

The Talmud in Sanhedrin
you not belong to 19b identifies the Mered
your husband of 1 Chron. 4:18, who
Caleb? And it didn’t married Pharaoh’s
bother you that he daughter, as Caleb.
took Pharaoh’s
daughter Bithiah as a second wife during
the exodus?

87
 MIRIAM True, I don’t understand why Caleb took
Bithiah. Was I not enough for him that he
had to take an Egyptian idol worshipper
too? She didn’t belong to him!

KORAH Ah, I see. I see it clearly. You suffer no envy,

Miriam, after all.

MIRIAM All I sought was the purity of our bloodline.

You all suffer envy. You Korah, Balaam,
Cain, Saul!

SAUL I suffer envy? I was the king of Israel. God

chose me from all other men. Miriam, dear
Miriam, protector of the redeemer, I am
here because God has directed it. But envy,
no.

SATAN You were a king who refused to kill the

enemy king, but were willing to kill your
own son Jonathan and David, the man who
saved Israel from the Philistines. But you
didn’t have those desires out of envy?

SAUL Yes, I wanted to kill David. A king has a duty

to kill those who threaten the kingdom,
who threaten open rebellion by their mere
existence. If a people find a warrior more
imposing than the king himself, a king who
countenances that state of affairs is a
88
 failure. I wanted David dead, not out of
envy, but as a matter of state. And, terrible
as it was, when my son Jonathan betrayed
his own father, his king, having allied with
David, I needed to end his life too.

SATAN And David’s extraordinary defeat of Goliath

that led the people to honor David in
tenfold greater numbers than you had
nothing to do with it? Nor did God’s
decision to choose David, “a man after his
own heart”? I caused you to throw yourself
on your sword, but I didn’t cause you
forgetfulness to be unable to remember the
events of your life. You now lie even to
yourself.

SAUL Why do I even argue with a fallen angel?

You can’t or won’t understand a leader’s
obligations. When David took Bathsheba,
and directed her husband Uriah to return to
his bed to disguise her pregnancy, David
couldn’t allow a warrior’s insubordination
to the king. One may quarrel with David’s
actions in taking Bathsheba, but not his
right – his duty – to have him killed.

KORAH And that’s why you tried to kill David many

times, and then even your own son! You,
89
 Moses and David should share a cave of
your own. And put a sign outside the cave:
“For murderous leaders who would stamp
out insubordination.” I’d wish to listen to
Saul explain to an understanding fellow King
David, why he tried to kill him.

BALAAM Hear, hear – because envy, of course, had

nothing at all to do with it.

MIRIAM Moses asked God to blot you out, Korah,

because you were defying God’s will. Saul
and David were about something else
altogether. Saul despised David for what
David meant to the house of Israel, and
wanted him dead. David was a great man,
as was Saul in his own way. But David
committed adultery and simply murdered
the victim cuckold Uriah to cover it up.
Moses struck a rock – he didn’t kill or try to
kill in envy.

Balaam, Korah, please spare us your

ludicrousness on this.

KORAH Ludicrousness? I have tried to be kindly to

you for your doings at the Nile in protecting
your baby brother and even for being a

90
 Prophetess in Israel, whatever that might
mean.

But when I listen to you, what comes to

mind is that God exiled you to a cave of
another sort when your skin turned to
leprosy. That Rashi on Numbers 12:1 cites the
the reason explanation that Zipporah had told
for your Miriam that Moses separated
leprosy was from her. Other commentators
nothing less cite the argument that Moses had
a second wife who was a Cushite
than a
(which, incidentally, some
primal belief
commentators define as
that Moses ‘beautiful’).
had gotten
too big for himself. After all, who was
Moses to believe that he alone – not you,
not Aaron – needed to remain pure always
and needed to abstain from intercourse,
fearful that God might call upon him at any
moment?

That’s what it was, no? God might call upon

you to strike the Nile to initiate the plagues.
Call on you to ascend Mount Sinai. Call on
you to stand at the Sea of Reeds to initiate
the crossing. Call on you to strike the rock
to bring forth water. So, you felt that if you
didn’t need to abstain from relations with
91
 your spouse Caleb why did Moses need to
separate from his spouse? Who did he think
he was, anyway?

MIRIAM No, Korah, you are wrong. It wasn’t about

my thinking I was Moses’ equal – I wasn’t,
nor was Aaron. It was about my love for my
sister-in-law, Zipporah. She had been at his
side for so long that I was troubled that
Moses was leaving off to the side the most
important person in his life, because of his
obsessive call to duty. His love for the
children of Israel had eclipsed everything
else, including the true love of his life,
Zipporah. Worried about it, I spoke to
Aaron. I just didn’t know how to speak to
Moses, fearing that he would be annoyed
that Zipporah had told me. You find bad in
everything.

KORAH Me? God didn’t find the bad? Are you

saying that God painted your skin white
because of your sisterly concern over the
intimacy between Moses and Zipporah? If
God did that, maybe you should have
wanted to lash out at God as Cain says he
did. God doesn’t know how to separate the
wheat from the chaff? It seems that your

92
 prophetic skills – your special access to the
ways of God – fail you.

BALAAM I, too, Miriam, wonder about the leprosy.

The Torah says that you defamed Moses
over the “Cushite” woman. But Moses’ wife
was a Midianite, Zipporah – Jethro’s
daughter. While Korah attacks your reason
for defaming Moses, I wonder whether,
instead, you are simply being untruthful
with Korah – that Moses had a second wife,
a Cushite, and it was that that troubled you.
Maybe it wasn’t envy at all. Maybe you just
didn’t like her. Maybe you simply didn’t like
the color of her skin.

MIRIAM You seek to trick me, to make me say – no,

the Cushite” wasn’t a second woman, or a
woman offensive to me. All to get me to
say, yes, it was because Moses irritated me
by “being so holy,” and so I lashed out at
him. My heart pains me, my head pains me.

I can’t bear this any longer. I have

descended into the depths of Sheol, but
would have withstood the torture of
burning fires more easily than this
pernicious onslaught. Cain, who murdered
his own brother, and Saul, who would have
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 murdered his own son, are easier to bear.
Bring on the fire, O’ Lord – bring me peace.

How could we not have seen what would

truly await us in Gehinnom?

SATAN You cry out to God and ask for relief, even
fire torture. Don’t you know that God can
give you no salvation here? You have gone
past the gate for that. Maybe somehow you
have ingested the poetic musings of that
disingenuous harpist, David, and thus cry
out for relief from the enduring torment of
Sheol.

Torment doesn’t end on earth, as Cain

notes, for any of you. That’s the beauty of
it, I say. Artists will draw portraits of how
they perceive hell; and writers, maybe
theologians, will offer their insights. But no
portrait showing five dark faces such as
yours will depict the lonely, despairing,
disputatious suffering of Gehinnom. A great
thinker, one day, will see that “hell is other
people.” But he won’t envision that hell is
really not knowing, nor perhaps admitting,
what brings one here.

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 SAUL And if I were to say, Satan, that my envy of
David is what brought me here, that would
end the torment?

SATAN Why don’t we see? Have you something to

lose?

SAUL I would lose the vitality of truth – utter

truth – for which I stood all my life. And for
what – the sadistic game you wish to play
with me?

SATAN I don’t play with you – this is your existence.

And your existence is shaped by your
unwillingness to tell the truth, not defy it.
Even at this late moment, you hide behind
silly evasions over why you hated David
even worse than you hated the Philistine
Goliath who mocked you so publicly. Come
to terms with it – David was more of a man
than you, more of a soldier than you, more
of a hero than you, and you knew that he
would be more of a king than you. Your
own son chose him, over you. And you
pride yourself on your truthfulness?

Face it, you couldn’t take it any longer. It

was as if your own brother gained God’s
grace, but not you. As if your cousin

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 became God’s chosen to lead, but you
didn’t. As if you were a prophet, but
another prophet was far greater. It was as if
David’s sacrifice was accepted by God, and
yours blew up in your face. Do you get it,
Saul? Do you get it, the rest of you?

SAUL Satan, do you listen to yourself? You have

berated the very name of God from the
instant you first drew Cain’s ire, arguing
from the depths of your own
disillusionment that you are greater than
God, even maybe God himself – when, in
fact, he presides everywhere, and has only
deputized you to this forgotten cave.

Yet you point your finger, telling your

“subjects” that they can’t admit why they
are here. And while, for some odd reason,
God accords you some presence in His
world, you come to believe that the world
belongs to you – that God is the also-ran.
You see no irony here? Isn’t it that God is all
good, and all the universe’s bad is you?
God’s goodness makes him appoint bad to
you!

SATAN If you see me as God’s trustee, the

dispenser of all the world’s bad, then God is
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 not all good, despite the delegation. And if
you see me as just an impotent iconoclast
who poses as trustee of the evil power,
then God is not all good. For then the bad
must come from Him directly. It’s a
conundrum.

But I suppose, given that you find

yourselves here for eternity – it’s not
important any longer for you to pretend
that God is all good. A basic truth – you
pretend that God is all good until it doesn’t
matter anymore. It doesn’t – for you. Face
the truth!

MIRIAM It’s extraordinary. You try to manipulate our

doom to provoke us to abandon fear of
God. You are evil, but you will fail. I shall
never not fear God – though loving him, at
this moment in your presence, is hard. I
shudder that I can even say that, but he
knows it anyway, though not because of the
self-indulgent belief you have in yourself,
Satan.

KORAH Miriam, great prophet, you don’t love God

anymore? What the worth of your brother’s
prayers now? Does he know that you don’t
love God anymore? Or has God told him of
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 it, as when he told Moses to not whine any
longer about going to the promised land?
My love for God never changes. You Cain,
you Saul?

BALAAM The Hebrews won’t answer you. They’re

afraid, even
Deut. 6:5 of course
when all is lost commands, “And you shall
for them. I never love the Lord your God with
loved God, so I all your heart, your soul and
experience no your means.”
such loss. I
suppose, though, that losing love is worse
than never having it. And why would I ever
love God? Did he do anything for me?
Wouldn’t my life have been the same if I
never even knew his name? Pharaoh didn’t
love God, didn’t even know his name, but
yet he was the Pharaoh.

The problem for you Israelites is having

wasted your love on God. You loved him,
each of you, even Cain, and look where you
end up. At least I knew I would never end in
heaven and, thus, didn’t squander my love
on him. Imagine – being commanded to
love!

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 SAUL Returning to your attack on me, you
challenge me over David. You challenge the
very thought of my good intentions. You
somehow conclude that when I became
melancholy as God’s spirit passed from me
to David that I was “angry” at David. You
argue that I hated David and envied him.
But maybe Cain’s act in killing Abel was
truly about God, not Abel.

And maybe so for me too. Maybe I was

angry at God, despite my love of him, that
he gave David the courage to fight Goliath,
but not me. Yes, I became suspicious of
David after he slew Goliath, and was
weakened in the eyes of the people. Still I
gave him my daughter Michal to love.

BALAAM Please Saul, you were desperately

diminished, even in your own mind, by the
very presence of David. You gave Michal to
him only to be a snare to him for the
Philistines. You asked Jonathan to kill him
too, but he wouldn’t. You tried to kill him
yourself, but your spear misfired. And then
only Michal putting mannequins in David’s
bed to mislead your soldiers saved David
from another murder attempt by you.
Finally, when Jonathan warned David of
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 another plot by you, you even tried to kill
Jonathan – your own son.

Must I go on? One might lash out at a man

in an instant of unhappiness, as with Cain.
But you, time and again, tried to kill the
man whose very presence terrorized you.
And you simply can’t admit that you hated
David out of envy. It was simply not
misplaced anger at God

Maybe you were jealous – believing God’s

spirit belonged over your head, belonged to
you. Either way, jealousy or envy, the king
of Israel fights now an impossible enemy –
dishonesty with oneself.

The king argues that his was an unrequited

love of God, not hatred for another man.
Does it really matter? You’re here forever,
but yet you simply can’t admit why. Does
pride in holding a position – even an
untenable one – matter so much for you
even now? You’re no longer king of Israel.
To admit defeat aloud will cause no morale
loss to your legions, no loss of kavod in
Israel, no disintegration of your reputation.

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 SAUL You continue to assault me, you attack my
reputation, but who is my interrogator – a
man who would be forgotten to the world
but for his evil against Israel. Does anyone
speak of King Balaam, Prophet Balaam? No,
they speak of the evil trickster Balaam. You
are a minor contestant to Moses, as Satan is
allegorically a contestant to God. No one
will ever honor you. The absence of a burial
plot for you is not for fear that pilgrims will
come to worship you.

And, the saddest part? God actually gave

you the capacity to be something akin to
Moses. But your warped sense of self, your
inability to see Moses as greater than you,
caused your death at the hands of Israel.
Your envy of Moses, nothing else, caused
you to lure the men of Israel to the Moabite
women. You could care less about that. All
you cared about was making Moses’
leadership odious in God’s eyes. You were
just like Korah.

CAIN You seem mirror images of each other.

KORAH Ah. Our killer in the corner has become a

philosopher – but one who refuses to look
at or inside himself. It’s so easy to look at
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 one’s neighbor, not oneself. My gilgul
would probably tell me that I, too, lost the
battle with my own plans for myself, and
struck out against Moses over a failure to
succeed. Yes, I could have been the fox who
could not reach the grapes on the vine and
so concluded that they weren’t good
anyway, unworthy of the torment to reach
them. And so the fox diminished them. The
children of Israel needed me and I couldn’t
ignore my duty to them.

MIRIAM Your duty to them! You had no interest in

anything but advancing yourself, and you
hated Moses that you couldn’t. Only you
know if you prayed to God for that
leadership.

KORAH And if I had prayed for it, and my prayers

were predicated on envy, would those
prayers have been answered?

MIRIAM Do you truly ask me which prayers God

answers?

KORAH You claimed to Aaron you were a prophet

on the level of Moses, and yet you don’t
know? Wouldn’t “the great Moses” know?

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 MIRIAM I actually thought for a brief shining
moment that you were asking a candid
question about the relationship between
God and man. But no, the malignancy of
your marrow has metastasized.

KORAH And for you, dear Miriam, it wasn’t a

constant – and you acknowledged to God
what motivated you to defame your
brother? Moses prayed for you, but I see no
mention of you praying – no remorse, no
admission of your envy. Admission is the
first step to the cure but, still, no admission
even now. You’re like our killer friend over
there who can’t un-bosom himself.

CAIN You want me to say I hated Abel, but why

would I hate him? God didn’t like my
sacrifice. Abel never taunted me over the
sacrifice. Abel was my playmate, my alter
ego. Our parents loved us equally. Why
would I hate him?

KORAH More of the same.

SATAN Saul, my cup runneth over – to use the

words of your would-be victim David. Easy
as it would be here for each of you to lay
bare your innermost thoughts, you cannot.

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 God is not here, but yet you can’t, even in
the confessional of this cave on the far edge
of nowhere, say anything from the depth of
your heart.

MIRIAM Satan, whatever it is that you are, the

paradox of being able to see our failures but
not seeing what makes you the evil that is
you, is blinding.

You say that we can’t admit to what

tragically motivated and destroyed us on
earth, but you are blind to your own envy of
God. You see yourself as a veto of all the
good God would wish to do, but can’t see
that you are simply his tool – a balance
against a world of perfection that He simply
doesn’t want. All you have is an ability to
present the beguiling choice of evil to those
vacillate over how to act. A capacity for
negativity that dooms you finally.

No one would want to be here. Still, you

proudly proclaim that this inferno is of you
– that you are the God of here. I am almost
moved to sympathy for you, but it would be
pointless. If I could return to earth, it would
simply be to tell the people of the world to
reject you at every turn. If only I had done
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 so… Well what’s the difference? It’s too late
for me. To say this on the Sabbath of
Passover can only further deflate me to the
depth my soul, and it is far too late for any
good to come of it.

A VOICE You stand on holy Ground, even here. No

bush burns for you, but you are still able to
encounter me, to commune with me.

I have listened to all that you would say to

one another. I come to “visit” you, though I
am of here too. I come as always do in
anticipation of the resurrection. I commune
always with all that belongs to me – as this
depth, too, belongs to me – for I am a
jealous God. The sun, the moon and all the
stars are to me – are of me – as even are
the depths of Sheol. I created all in the
week of creation. They are my handiwork.

SATAN But God, is not Sheol of me? Is it not?

GOD Satan, be silent. I am here to commune, but

not with you. Rather with the denizens who
inhabit this cave forgotten to the world. I
have no need of you now. Depart.

KORAH If I may, dear Lord – all I did, I did in your

name, for the sake of the children of Israel.
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 Still, I feel, I sense within my soul, that what
I say to you is for naught.

CAIN God almighty, your rejection of my sacrifice

was too traumatic, too much to bear. I
loved my brother Abel with all my heart to
the day he died. Still, I killed him without
hate or envy in my heart, and I remain lost
without him. To have even tried to be Abel
would have deprived me of the brother I
loved. I have loved him constantly since
even before I was worn down by life.

But I sense, without words spoken, that you

still reject me.

SAUL How I wish, Ribon haOlam, I could have

made you assured in my kingship, how I
could have been worthy of your admiration,
love and respect. For my failures I shall
always be in pain.

But the melancholy returns again. I know

that you don’t accept me even now. My
meager words change nothing.

BALAAM In my lifetime, you told me your innermost

ways, and I lived in gratitude of that, even
though I never worshiped you. By your
showing yourself to me as you did in my
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 lifetime and do here, you show the nations
of the world that your “goodly tents” cover
all of it.

But you see through all of what I say to you.

You know me too well. It is too late for me
for you have heard what I said before I
knew you had joined us in Sheol.

MIRIAM Master, I am a sinner. Nothing I say can

repair me. My brother Moses, the
redeemer, was everything. Just to imagine
how hard his life, only for his own sister to
voice petty resentment against him.
Complaining that I myself didn’t have his
intimacy with you reduces me still, it having
caused me to defame Moses. The leprosy,
which you removed from me after Moses
prayed for me, grips my soul even now. But
now I impose the punishment on myself,
and will until the end of time.

Forgive me, Lord, but for what I have done,

I must depart your midst. Even without
eyes, I can longer endure the piercing,
searing light you shine on me in this cave of
darkness and the forgotten.

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 GOD Miriam, I will not forsake you. You will be
with me. You will be with Moses and Aaron
and the children of Israel.

VOICE Lord, forgive me – I left the world as a

young man when torture ravaged my body.
I don’t know enough of your ways. I died
young, never to comb gray hairs. As if to say
that a longer life would have even helped
me to better understand your ways. I lived
as a rebel.

I don’t understand much of what those

assembled here have uttered this day. But,
still, I admire each in some compelling way.
I wish I had the passion of Korah, the honor
of Saul though he would have wanted to kill
off the Messianic future, the place in your
creation of Balaam, the simple humanity of
Cain. The introspection of Miriam.

And while Satan seems only to stand for

evil, I wish I had in me whatever it was that
caused your majesty to make him whatever
he is to you. Somehow his place in the
world may be why I find myself here. I just
don’t know. I can’t imagine you creating
him without a purpose.

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 In some way, I suppose, I would have
wanted to have lived a longer life to
combine each of their traits into my own
being. Maybe I would, then, have given
more to the world, and been more worthy
to both you and those who saw me as an
infidel.

SATAN The young man is a naïve fool. I pray thee,

don’t listen to him any longer. I will take
away the word that was sown in him. He
should be in danger of the fires of hell. I
already tempted him for many days some
time ago and, you see, he finds himself
here.

GOD I told you to depart! I see so clearly the

insufferability that is you. Even I can’t bear
you now. The halting eloquence of this
young man, this son of mine, has proven
that perhaps I must see the world and my
creations with fresh and altered resolve.
Leave me now at once, and be with those
who must remain behind with you.

MIRIAM Lord, please take the young man. Take him

with you in my stead. Take him to my
brothers. I will stay behind where I belong.

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 GOD No. You will live on. Both you, Miriam, my
daughter, and the young man will be with
me to live on, on to the coming day of
resurrection. He has only been here for one
moment in time.

Redemption is for all those who live on, no

matter the depths to which they may have
fallen or descended.

I am the Lord, thy God.

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 SCRIPTURES

Cain and Abel: Genesis 4:1-16

Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and
bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the
Lord.” Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper
of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. In the course of time
Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground,
and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their
fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering,
but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was
very angry, and his countenance fell. The Lord said to Cain,
“Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If
you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do
well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you
must master it.”

Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.”

And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his
brother Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain,
“Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I
my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you
done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the
ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has
opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your
hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its
strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
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 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can
bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall
be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer
on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” Then
the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a
sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so
that no one who came upon him would kill him. Then Cain
went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the
land of Nod, east of Eden.

Korah: Numbers 16:1-11

Now Korah son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, along

with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—
descendants of Reuben—took 250 Israelite men, leaders of the
congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men,
and they confronted Moses. They assembled against Moses
and against Aaron, and said to them, “You have gone too far!
All the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord
is among them. So why then do you exalt yourselves above the
assembly of the Lord?”

When Moses heard it, he fell on his face. Then he said to

Korah and all his company, “In the morning the Lord will make
known who is his, and who is holy, and who will be allowed to
approach him; the one whom he will choose he will allow to
approach him. Do this: take censers, Korah and all your
company, and tomorrow put fire in them, and lay incense on
them before the Lord; and the man whom the Lord chooses
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 shall be the holy one. You Levites have gone too far!” Then
Moses said to Korah, “Hear now, you Levites! Is it too little for
you that the God of Israel has separated you from the
congregation of Israel, to allow you to approach him in order
to perform the duties of the Lord’s tabernacle, and to stand
before the congregation and serve them? He has allowed you
to approach him, and all your brother Levites with you; yet you
seek the priesthood as well! Therefore you and all your
company have gathered together against the Lord. What is
Aaron that you rail against him?”

Korah: Numbers 16:15-19

Moses was very angry and said to the Lord, “Pay no

attention to their offering. I have not taken one donkey from
them, and I have not harmed any one of them.” And Moses
said to Korah, “As for you and all your company, be present
tomorrow before the Lord, you and they and Aaron; and let
each one of you take his censer, and put incense on it, and
each one of you present his censer before the Lord, 250
censers; you also, and Aaron, each his censer.” So each man
took his censer, and they put fire in the censers and laid
incense on them, and they stood at the entrance of the tent of
meeting with Moses and Aaron. Then Korah assembled the
whole congregation against them at the entrance of the tent of
meeting. And the glory of the Lord appeared to the whole
congregation.

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 Korah: Numbers 16:28-32

And Moses said, “This is how you shall know that the
Lord has sent me to do all these works; it has not been of my
own accord: If these people die a natural death, or if a natural
fate comes on them, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the
Lord creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth
and swallows them up, with all that belongs to them, and they
go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men
have despised the Lord.”

As soon as he finished speaking all these words, the

ground under them was split apart. The earth opened its
mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households—
everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods.

Saul: 1 Samuel 15: 1-28

Then Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint

you as king over His people, over Israel; now therefore, listen
to the words of the Lord.” Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I will
punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself
against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has,
and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman,
child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” Then Saul
summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, 200,000
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 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. Saul came to the city of
Amalek and set an ambush in the valley. Saul said to the
Kenites, “Go, depart, go down from among the Amalekites, so
that I do not destroy you with them; for you showed kindness
to all the sons of Israel when they came up from Egypt.” So the
Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. So Saul
defeated the Amalekites, from Havilah as you go to Shur,
which is east of Egypt. He captured Agag the king of the
Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the
edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and
the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs and all
that was good, and were not willing to destroy them utterly;
but everything despised and worthless, that they utterly
destroyed.

Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying, “I

regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from
following me and has not carried out my commands.” And
Samuel was distressed and cried out to the Lord all night.
Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul; and it was told
Samuel, saying, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a
monument for himself, then turned and proceeded on down
to Gilgal.” Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed
are you of the Lord! I have carried out the command of the
Lord.” But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the
sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?”
Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for
the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen, to sacrifice
to the Lord your God; but the rest we have utterly destroyed.”

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 Then Samuel said to Saul, “Wait, and let me tell you
what the Lord said to me last night.” And he said to him,
“Speak!” Samuel said, “Is it not true, though you were little in
your own eyes, you were made the head of the tribes of Israel?
And the Lord anointed you king over Israel, and the Lord sent
you on a mission, and said, ‘Go and utterly destroy the sinners,
the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are
exterminated.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the
Lord, but rushed upon the spoil and did what was evil in the
sight of the Lord?”

Then Saul said to Samuel, “I did obey the voice of the

Lord, and went on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and
have brought back Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly
destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took some of the
spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the things devoted to
destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God at Gilgal.” Samuel
said, “Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and
sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey
is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For
rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as
iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of
the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king.”

Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned; I have indeed

transgressed the command of the Lord and your words,
because I feared the people and listened to their voice. Now
therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me, that I may
worship the Lord.” But Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return
with you; for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the
Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.” As Samuel
turned to go, Saul seized the edge of his robe, and it tore. So

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 Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel
from you today and has given it to your neighbor, who is
better than you.”

Balaam: Numbers 22:1-40

The Israelites set out, and camped in the plains of Moab

across the Jordan from Jericho. Now Balak son of Zippor saw
all that Israel had done to the Amorites. Moab was in great
dread of the people, because they were so numerous; Moab
was overcome with fear of the people of Israel. And Moab said
to the elders of Midian, “This horde will now lick up all that is
around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field.” Now Balak
son of Zippor was king of Moab at that time. He sent
messengers to Bilaam son of Beor at Pethor, which is on the
Euphrates, in the land of Amaw, to summon him, saying, “A
people has come out of Egypt; they have spread over the face
of the earth, and they have settled next to me. Come now,
curse this people for me, since they are stronger than I;
perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the
land; for I know that whomever you bless is blessed, and
whomever you curse is cursed.”

So the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed

with the fees for divination in their hand; and they came to
Bilaam, and gave him Balak’s message. He said to them, “Stay
here tonight, and I will bring back word to you, just as the Lord
speaks to me”; so the officials of Moab stayed with Bilaam.
God came to Bilaam and said, “Who are these men with you?”
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 Bilaam said to God, “King Balak son of Zippor of Moab, has
sent me this message: ‘A people has come out of Egypt and
has spread over the face of the earth; now come, curse them
for me; perhaps I shall be able to fight against them and drive
them out.’” God said to Bilaam, “You shall not go with them;
you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.” So Bilaam
rose in the morning, and said to the officials of Balak, “Go to
your own land, for the Lord has refused to let me go with you.”
So the officials of Moab rose and went to Balak, and said,
“Bilaam refuses to come with us.”

Once again Balak sent officials, more numerous and

more distinguished than these. They came to Bilaam and said
to him, “Thus says Balak son of Zippor: ‘Do not let anything
hinder you from coming to me; for I will surely do you great
honor, and whatever you say to me I will do; come, curse this
people for me.’” But Bilaam replied to the servants of Balak,
“Although Balak were to give me his house full of silver and
gold, I could not go beyond the command of the Lord my God,
to do less or more. You remain here, as the others did, so that I
may learn what more the Lord may say to me.” That night God
came to Bilaam and said to him, “If the men have come to
summon you, get up and go with them; but do only what I tell
you to do.” So Bilaam got up in the morning, saddled his
donkey, and went with the officials of Moab.

God’s anger was kindled because he was going, and the

angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his adversary.
Now he was riding on the donkey, and his two servants were
with him. The donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the
road, with a drawn sword in his hand; so the donkey turned off
the road, and went into the field; and Bilaam struck the

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 donkey, to turn it back onto the road. Then the angel of the
Lord stood in a narrow path between the vineyards, with a wall
on either side. When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it
scraped against the wall, and scraped Bilaam’s foot against the
wall; so he struck it again. Then the angel of the Lord went
ahead, and stood in a narrow place, where there was no way
to turn either to the right or to the left. When the donkey saw
the angel of the Lord, it lay down under Bilaam; and Bilaam’s
anger was kindled, and he struck the donkey with his staff.
Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and it said to
Bilaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me
these three times?” Bilaam said to the donkey, “Because you
have made a fool of me! I wish I had a sword in my hand! I
would kill you right now!” But the donkey said to Bilaam, “Am I
not your donkey, which you have ridden all your life to this
day? Have I been in the habit of treating you this way?” And he
said, “No.”

Then the Lord opened the eyes of Bilaam, and he saw

the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with his drawn
sword in his hand; and he bowed down, falling on his face. The
angel of the Lord said to him, “Why have you struck your
donkey these three times? I have come out as an adversary,
because your way is perverse before me. The donkey saw me,
and turned away from me these three times. If it had not
turned away from me, surely just now I would have killed you
and let it live.” Then Bilaam said to the angel of the Lord, “I
have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing in the
road to oppose me. Now therefore, if it is displeasing to you, I
will return home.” The angel of the Lord said to Bilaam, “Go
with the men; but speak only what I tell you to speak.” So
Bilaam went on with the officials of Balak.
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 When Balak heard that Bilaam had come, he went out to
meet him at Ir-moab, on the boundary formed by the Arnon, at
the farthest point of the boundary. Balak said to Bilaam, “Did I
not send to summon you? Why did you not come to me? Am I
not able to honor you?” Bilaam said to Balak, “I have come to
you now, but do I have power to say just anything? The word
God puts in my mouth, that is what I must say.” Then Bilaam
went with Balak, and they came to Kiriath-huzoth. Balak
sacrificed oxen and sheep, and sent them to Bilaam and to the
officials who were with him

Balaam: Numbers 24:1-9

Now Bilaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless

Israel, so he did not go, as at other times, to look for
omens, but set his face toward the wilderness. Bilaam
looked up and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe. Then
the spirit of God came upon him, and he uttered his
oracle, saying:

“The oracle of Bilaam son of Beor, the oracle of

the man whose eye is clear, the oracle of one who
hears the words of God, who sees the vision of the
Almighty, who falls down, but with eyes uncovered:
how fair are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O
Israel! Like palm groves that stretch far away, like
gardens beside a river, like aloes that the Lord has
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 planted, like cedar trees beside the waters. Water shall
flow from his buckets, and his seed shall have
abundant water, his king shall be higher than Agag,
and his kingdom shall be exalted. God who brings him
out of Egypt, is like the horns of a wild ox for him; he
shall devour the nations that are his foes and break
their bones. He shall strike with his arrows. He
crouched, he lay down like a lion, and like a lioness;
who will rouse him up? Blessed is everyone who
blesses you, and cursed is everyone who curses you.”

Miriam: Numbers 12:1-16

While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke

against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had
married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman); and
they said, “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he
not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. Now the
man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the
face of the earth. Suddenly the Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and
Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” So the
three of them came out. Then the Lord came down in a pillar
of cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called
Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forward. And he said,
“Hear my words:

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 When there are prophets among you, I the Lord make
myself known to them in visions; I speak to them in dreams.
Not so with my servant Moses; he is entrusted with all my
house. With him I speak face to face—clearly, not in riddles;
and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not
afraid to speak against my servant Moses?”

And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and
he departed.

When the cloud went away from over the tent, Miriam
had become leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned
towards Miriam and saw that she was leprous. Then Aaron
said to Moses, “Oh, my Lord, do not punish us for a sin that we
have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like one
stillborn, whose flesh is half consumed when it comes out of its
mother’s womb.” And Moses cried to the Lord, “O God, please
heal her.” But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had but
spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days?
Let her be shut out of the camp for seven days, and after that
she may be brought in again.” So Miriam was shut out of the
camp for seven days; and the people did not set out on the
march until Miriam had been brought in again. After that the
people set out from Hazeroth, and camped in the wilderness of
Paran.

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