When Israelites were piled east of the Jordan River, Balak, in fear of being conquered (as the Amorites were as well), requested for Balaam, a prophet, to curse the Israelites in order to drive them out of the land. Balak (wearing a crown) from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations. The Torah records how, after being thoroughly humiliated by his talking donkey, Balaam, the non-Jewish sorcerer and prophet commissioned by Balak King of Moab to curse the Jews, found himself incapable of cursing them. For a list of Haaretz newsletters, click here. That’s because local Bedouin broke up the stone shortly after it was found, and even though most of it was pieced together, some parts remain missing. Asked August 14 2015 Balak was the son of Zippor, and was a king of Moab. Sign Up to view the rest of this answer. Frightened by the fall of the lands of the Amorites and Bashan, the kings of Moab and Midian, implacable foes for many generations, united for the purpose of a common attack upon the children of Israel.Balak, the newly elected king of Moab, had been put in charge of the plans. The inscription also attests to the historicity of several biblical figures, including Mesha himself (who appears in 2 Kings 3) as well as the Israelite king Omri and his son Ahab. According to the Zohar, this was not the name of Balak's father but rather referred to a magical metal bird which Balak made use of. It would be yet another confirmation that the holy text was written centuries after the purported events it narrates and that its authors had a penchant for taking known historical figures and then projecting them into a different time and weaving them into stories and parables for their own theological purposes. From fear of the Israelites, who were encamped near the confines of his territory, he applied to Balaam (q.v.) In the Bible, Balak appears much earlier in the story of the Hebrews, ostensibly centuries before the time of Mesha. Who was the young man clothed in a white linen nightshirt following Jesus? His story is in the context of the time of the Israelites’ journey to the Promised Land. 22; 23; 24; Judg. As such, it seems to have been an appellative for a warrior king. The name Balak, or Balaq (בָלָ֧ק), is from the Hebrew verb balaq (בלק), which means "to waste, lay waste, devastate". General Editor. Forty years after the Exodus, when the Israelites, still led by Moses, emerge from the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, they pass through Moab. One man’s House of David is another’s Balak, At the bottom of his victory stele, in the 31st line of the text, Mesha tells us that after defeating the northern Kingdom of Israel, which had conquered part of Moab’s ancestral territories to the northeast of the Dead Sea, he moved south to vanquish a place called Horonaim and someone or something who “dwelt therein.”. Balak Sends For Balaam. In the book of Numbers, Balak is the one and only ruler of the kingdom of Moab – whereas in history it would seem that he was a losing rival of Mesha in vying for supremacy over the region east of the Dead Sea.