Covering the Eye of the Land (Parashat Balak: Numbers 22:2-25:9)

Last updated on: July 5, 2017 at 5:21 pm by Hebrew College

Covering the Eye of the Land (Parashat Balak: Numbers 22:2-25:9) 2017-07-05T17:21:50-04:00 Hebrew College

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Rabbi Emma-Kippley-Ogman-

Rabbi Emma-Kippley-Ogman

By Rabbi Emma-Kippley-Ogman

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

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

Balak’s language adds a dimension to the Israelite scouts’ expression of fear on entering the land — being seen as grasshoppers means not only being seen as insignificant, but also being feared as a purveyor of famine. In this encounter, as in our contemporary circumstances, the longstanding resident and the relative newcomer are mutually afraid.

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

Fear of what is concealed: Rabbi Pinchas HaLevi Horowitz (Panim Yafot, 18th) proposes that the Divine clouds of glory that surrounded the Israelites on their desert wanderings would have blocked them physically from view, arousing Balak’s fear of needing to fight an invisible interloper.
Personal fear as a leader: Bemidbar Rabba reads covering the eye of the land as Balak’s fear on learning of the conquest of neighboring kings: “The ones who closed the eyes that the land depended on — Sichon and Og — are here with me — what will I do?”
Existential fear for the future of the region: Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th) reads in Balak’s voice: “In all the neighboring lands which our eyes can see, we see not the old nations, but only this one… I do not know whether they will attack me, but I am afraid, so must stand against them for the good of the collective.”

The common aspect of all these fears is an inversion. Balak perceives the Israelites as covering the eye of the land, which leads to a covering of his own eyes, a narrowing of his imagination in possibilities for their encounter. The fear possesses Balak and focuses him on cursing his perceived adversary. In our contemporary reality, we too know the experience of being taken over by fear, how that fear changes our perceptions of those we see, allowing us to speak to ourselves about other human beings with simultaneously demeaning and exaggeratedly elevating language. We know what it feels like to see the eye of the earth disappear, to find our own eyes covered, degrading the humanity of seer and seen.

And yet, there is a possibility that from a place of closing our eyes, we might reverse our perceptions: a remedy for dehumanizing sight is indicated in the malady itself. In a Hasidic reading of our verse, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (S’fat Emet, 19th c.) proposes that covering the eye of the land is an act of cultivating interior consciousness: “This is the earth-ward gaze that the children of Israel cultivated in order to see only the inner reality of every thing, annulling the exterior gaze that shows how things seem to be with the physical eyes.” The Sfat Emet offers a practice to remedy the dehumanizing possibilities of the assumptions we all make on first glances, colored by our fears and our pre-conceived notions of what we will see. Cultivating interiority, we can create an inner space to question our first seeing. Knowing that what we see on the surface is but one dimension of a much deeper reality, we broaden our capacity to respond to the other human beings we encounter in the world. It is this possibility present in covering the eye of land that enables us to see beyond our fears, knowing each other as human beings rather than grasshoppers.

Rabbi Emma Kippley-Ogman, is a 2010 graduate of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton Centre, MA. She serves as Associate Chaplain of Jewish Life at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN.

Previous Post

April 21, 2026

The Holy Art of World Building

Next Post

July 12, 2017 Wonder Woman and Pinchas: The Persistent Appeal of Zealotry

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2026 March 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz