ENJOY……..I THINK
Bilama man of great wisdom, a very talented man, a man of the highest intelligence (how repetitive was that???), out of all the “great” goyim that have lived in the course of earths lengthy (not a real word??)history he was the ONE chosen to be the prophet, he was the one chosen to be the “answer” to jewish spiritual supremacy, he was the one who………..etc. etc. etc. so WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS HE THINKING?????
Hashem blessed be he, just went through a lot of “trouble” getting this poor nation of slaves out of the depths of egyptland, the world superpower at the time, splitting the sea for them, he leads them through a giant and dangerous desert, only to…….. kill them all at the instance bilam opens his mouth to curse them!!!! gimmee a break!!
Bilam knew that hashem wouldn’t listen to him, he, out of all ppl, knew how important the jewish nation was to hashem, that without them there is no reason to even have the world keep going bichlal, if there is one second without torah in this world it will immediately go back to toho va’vohu, which would in affect mean that bilam was trying to commit suicide, cuz if his “plan” actually works, he and the rest of the world will go down together with the jews, and so bottom line is- if Bilam KNEW that he would not succeed why did he even try??
As mentioned earlier in this honorable discourse, bilam was far from being stupid! and so this is (what i think) his actual plan was from the get go.
Bilam was planing all along to get the jews to sin with the midyanite women, he knew he had no chance to get them on the “supernatural” cuz their entire existence was supernatural! and so he decided to attack them from the most natural, physical way possible. If so why the whole “trouble” of trying to curse them first? with all the repeated attempts and tries? well its your lucky day, cuz i have an answer for that too!!
The most simple thing is that he wanted the money, but i have a feeling that Balack would have caught on if that was all that was going on, or at leat he would have had some insurance policy which stated he would get his money back in case the cursing thing didn’t quite work out….
But the answer i wanted to give is this- Bilam knew the cursing woudn’t work, but he wanted to “try” anyway, in order to “force” hashem to protect the jews, in order for hashem to not be angry for that split second on those specific days (as the midrash states), to show how much hashem actually loves the jews, and how much he is willing to do in order to protect us, but once again why would bilam want that? very simple, cuz that would intensify the spit in the face which bney yisroel do right after it! hashem just protected us, in a highly supernatural way, and how do we thank him? by sinning! a father just saved his son from an on coming bus, and how does his son repay him? by not listening to anything he has to say for the next week, a wife has a crazy day at work yet she rushes home to clean up a bit and cook her husband a gorgeous meal. how does he repay her? he doesn’t even acknowledge her existence as he walks in, takes his food to the living room and eats it while watching the game, or a mother…i think u get the idea!
Bilam wanted to increase hashems anger at the jews, and what better way by first having hashem show bney yisroel his love for them, to only be spit at later! not that stupid after all Mr. Bilam!!!!
Sadly enough the same goes on nowadays, the entire existence of jews in this world is a miracle, the everyday existence of jews in isarel is even more of a miracle, and how do we repay hashem for his daily supernatural protection…………….better left unsaid 🙁