Balak the king of Moab is afraid of the Jewish people. He hires Balaam to curse them.
Background
Balaam, after having some problems with his donkey, arrives in Moab.
Balak takes him to 3 vantage points to see the Jewish camp. In the first two locations, God puts words into Balaam’s mouth which he shares with Balak.
Balaam begins his second speech by telling Balak to be respectful and pay attention. Then he says:
19. God is not a man, that He will lie; nor the son of man, that He will reconsider. Will He say and not do, or will He speak and not fulfill?
Numbers 23:19 Basic Meaning
I will start by looking at some of the commentaries that focus on the meaning of Numbers 23:19 in the context of the story.
Rashi writes that Balaam is telling Balak that God had already sworn to the Jewish people to bring them to the land of Canaan and for them to inherit it. So, Balak, do you think that you can kill them in the wilderness?
Also, Rashi explains that the entire second half of the verse is a question expressing bewilderment.
Rashbam comments that Balaam’s message is that God will not retract from a blessing He has bestowed. From the time God gave His blessing, the Jewish people have not sinned in a way that would warrant nullifying the blessing.
I’ll write more about this concept at the end of this article.
Ibn Ezra provides this background: In verse 23:13 Balak asked Balaam to curse the Jewish people from the new place he was taking him. But Balaam, in his first prophecy, had already told Balak (Numbers 23:8) that God had not cursed them.
Rabbi Hirsch points out that God said from the beginning that the Jewish people were blessed (Numbers 22:12). Once God says this, a curse by a mortal man cannot stick to them.
According to R. Hirsch, Balaam should have told Balak from the very beginning that he could not under any circumstances curse the Jewish people.
According to Ibn Ezra, Balak should have known after Balaam’s first prophecy that it was futile to try to curse them.
Nonetheless, they both persisted in trying to curse the Jewish people.
Numbers 23:19 The Broader Meaning
Chizkuni enumerates 3 reasons why a person may reconsider and not fulfill a promise.
- The person has the ability to fulfill his word, but decides for no reason not to do so.
- The person lacks the ability to fulfill his word.
- The person who was promised something proves himself unworthy of receiving it.
He then points out that the first two reasons do not apply to God: God does not act without reason. God does not lack the ability to fulfill His word.
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan and others use our verse to formulate a general rule:
21:25 In general, God does not retract a good decree, as the Torah states, “God is not human that He should be false, nor mortal that He should change His mind. Shall He say something and not do it, or speak and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19). Though God never retracts a good decree, even because of sin, a person’s sins can cause Him to bring the good in such a way that no benefit is derived from it, thus effectively annulling the good.
This would seem to settle the issue. But there is the problem that some verses in the Bible do talk about God changing His mind.
But God Does Reconsider
I want to look at 3 instances in the Bible that mention God changing His mind.
Genesis 6:6 – Creation of Man
The Torah tells us that only a few generations after the creation of man that God regretted what He had done.
6. And the Lord repented [Hebrew: yi’nachem] that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.
Ibn Ezra explains that God is not a person who will have regrets. Rather, the Torah uses human language to describe God’s actions in terms we can understand.
Just as a person who makes a mistake will have regrets, so too God can have “regrets.”
The idea that “the Torah uses human language” can be used to explain many of the anthropomorphisms in the Bible.
Rabbi Hirsch looks for an explanation based on Hebrew grammar. He makes a distinction between two Hebrew verb forms from the 3-letter root nun-chet-mem.
One form is “hitnacheim” meaning to change one’s mind on his own without any external cause.
This is the form used in Numbers 23:19 and translated as “reconsider.”
The second form is “hinacheim” meaning to change one’s mind due to external circumstances.
This verb form is used in Genesis 6:6 and translated as “repented.” It’s clear from Genesis 6:1-5 that the “external circumstances” were the multitude of sins being committed by people.
1 Samuel 15:29 – Samuel and Saul
The verb form “hinacheim” is also used in 1 Samuel 15:29.
29. And also the Eternal One of Israel will not lie nor reconsider [Hebrew: yinacheim]; for He is not a man, that He should reconsider [Hebrew: hinacheim].
Samuel is speaking to King Saul. He is telling him that God’s decree to remove him from the kingship is final and will not be reversed, even if Saul fully repents.
God chose Saul as king. When Saul proved himself no longer worthy of being king, so too did God change His mind about Saul.
Joel 2 – Power of Repentance
The beginning of Joel’s prophecy is about the Land of Israel suffering a plague of locusts. He then advises the people how they might avoid this plague.
12. Yet even now, says the Lord, return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning;
13. And tear your heart, and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God; for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repents [Hebrew: nicham] of the evil.
14. Who knows? Perhaps He will turn and relent [Hebrew: nicham], and leave a blessing behind Him; a meal offering and a drink offering to the Lord your God?
Dr. Mendel Hirsch, a son of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, explains:
… it is declared of God, … that in the light of teshuvah He is always ready to change His mind, as it were, concerning a calamity that had already been decreed.
This is another example of how the people can change and then God will also “change.”
The Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin) commenting on our verse provides a clear summary of this concept:
All of the “mind changes” of God’s decree are only by means of prayer and repentance that remove the decree. This is not “regret” (Heaven forbid) rather God built into the world that prayer can nullify the decree.
Further Reading
Numbers 23:19 is from the Parshat Balak. You can read a summary of it here.