How we treat the outcast, the marginalized, the despised will come back to us.

As the pagan prophet winds down his whirlwind tour, hired by Balak to survey and curse the Children of Israel, he offers a few final observations on his way out. Gazing at the Israelite camp below, he is filled with God’s spirit, and in that trance, he enunciates one of humanity’s most bizarre and unlikely ideas. He tells the Israelites, “Blessed are they who bless you; Accursed they who curse you! (24:9).”

Imagine if a minute and obscure Semitic tribe were a cosmic fulcrum: blessing and curse were the consequence of one’s relationship with that particular people. How arrogant to claim that kind of centrality in the drama of human affairs, and how unlikely. History is a series of cause and effect, best explained by sociological, economic, political, military, or even ideological forces. But surely not as a barometer of how nations relate to the Jews.

So it must seem, dear reader, astounding to note that Balaam’s weird declaration is one of the Bible’s most literally true claims. The Egypt of the Pharaoh’s is no more, the Syrian Greek empire collapsed, as did the Roman Empire. In our own time, the Nazis and the Soviets trotted to the dustbin of history, and what all these failed societies share is the extent of their focus on the Jews as objects of hate, ridicule, and brutality. And the nations that bless their Jewish residents: well, the Golden Age of Spain was a time of relative interfaith cooperation, blessing not only the Jews but the Christians and Muslims as well. Think of the Prophet Mohammed in Medina – another Golden Age of interfaith cooperation. Think of the United States in the Twentieth Century.

Apparently, Balaam was on to something: Jews are the canary in the coal mine, and one way to assess the social health and potential of a nation or community is to assess its relationship to the Jews: bless them, and harvest blessing. Curse them and suffer in turn. That much is the consistent lesson of history.

What we don’t know, though, is: does the blessing emerge from the creating a habit of generosity and blessing, or is the blessing that follows specific to the treatment of Jews? Can we broaden this Biblical anomaly to include others: how we treat the outcast, the marginalized, the despised will come back to us, will be visited on us?

Why risk it? Instead, lets double down on loving our neighbor, loving the stranger, and then wait for the bounty that will flow from that love and welcome