Parshas Mattos - Bilaam's Blessing was a Curse

In Parshas Mattos, Moshe briefly mentions the "matter of Bilaam" when indicting the nation of Midian. But while there are commentaries that discuss when the sorcerer might have advised King Balak of his scheme, we need not look for offstage moments when it was there right before us.

On the surface Bilaam appears to be pious and devout. A man who repeatedly insists that he cannot say anything that G-d does not place in his lips. But what appears to be a profession of integrity is actually a message. It is a message akin to "we are being listened to and I cannot speak freely." Balak, vulgar and arrogant, is slow to understand the message even though Bilaam lays it out for him in the first blessing.

Bilaam understands what Balak does not, that cursing the Jews will not work and tells him what will by cleverly inverting a curse into a blessing. 

"How can I curse whom G-d has not cursed, and how can I invoke wrath if the Lord has not been angered?" he asks, conveying that the way forward is to have the Jews anger G-d.

No amount of cursing the Jews will work. The Jews themselves must be seduced into angering G-d.

"It is a nation that will dwell alone, and will not be reckoned among the nations," he goes on, indicating in the inverse that the way to bring down the Jews is to reach out to them and integrate them.

The next reference to seed and offspring hints at the way forward.

The next time around, Bilaam once again warns that "I have received  to bless, and He has blessed, and I cannot retract it." 

Again the message is that Midian must create that evil and wrongness.

He concludes by telling Balak that he cannot defeat Israeli militarily. Only corrupting them will work.

In the third blessing, Bilaam emphasizes the tents and dwelling places of Jacob and the dispersion of his seed.

Despairing of Balak's stupidity, he warns of the coming destruction in the future.

Bilaam's conspiracy is out there in the open. And while it takes Balak some time to figure it out, seemingly he or some of his people do and launch their campaign of corruption and seduction.

The lesson is that some blessings are really curses. Unable to direct curse the Jews, Bilaam instead made his blessings into curses highlighting weak points and a strategy to exploit them. Moshe understood what Balak did not immediately apprehend, that Bilaam had used his prophecy to maliciously warp G-d's blessings. And why did G-d allow him to do it? The experience served as a test and a warning to the Jews of what they must avoid once inside Israel.