At Tell Deir Alla, a remarkable inscription was discovered. In plaster, written in red and black ink in an unusual West Semitic script was a prophecy by one Balaam, son of Beor. This name is familiar to many readers of the Bible as the famous prophet from Mesopotamia who was summoned by Balak, king of Moab, to curse Israel as it was on the plains of Moab in the days of Moses (see Numbers 22-24). Alternatively, Balaam could have been from Gilead the ancient name of the region where the inscription was found, or if the Samaritan Pentateuch is correct, then from the neighboring Ammonite region.
Balaam was forbidden by God to curse Israel and instead blesses them on three occasions much to the consternation of Balak. Balaam then proceeds to give one of the earlier Messianic prophecies, known as the star prophecy (see Numbers 24:17) that both early Christians and Jewish revolutionaries both understood as Messianic. Though Balaam isn’t able to curse Israel, we do see him on the wrong side as he is killed in battle against Israel in Numbers 31. This seems due to the fact that it may have been Balaam who advised Balak about getting Midianite women to seduce the Israelite men into worshiping Baal and thus getting Israel to curse itself (see Numbers 25). Later in the New Testament, Balaam is symbolic for both the wages of wickedness and the sexualized idolatry (see 2 Peter 2:15, Jude 11, and Revelation 2:14). The inscription gives us an extrabiblical reference to Balaam, the most ancient of characters yet attested by an outside archaeological source.
Tell Deir-Alla is in modern-day Jordan not far from the Jordan River. It was first excavated in the 1960s with the inscription being discovered in 1967. The inscription was discovered by archaeologist H. J. Franken of Leiden University though it was a sharp-eyed Jordanian workman that first noticed the inscription. It’s not a large site only being about 50 meters by 200 meters in size and rising up about 27 meters. It has an occupation level from the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BC) to the Muslim period (beginning about AD600). It has been identified with various biblical sites like Penuel, but most of the time it is identified with biblical Succoth.The inscription itself is highly fragmented, but two major sections exist. It was written in a cursive-style script common to Aramaic of about 800 BC. While these letters are relatively distinct, there are many letters that are smudged and since it is a consonantal text only, many words are open to a few interpretational possibilities. There is some debate about the language of the inscription. While the masculine plural ends with a nun (an “n”) which is characteristic of Aramaic, the presence of the waw consecutive construction is a construction found in Hebrew, not Aramaic. Still others have postulated that it is some form of Canaanite. Still, this Western Semitic text is translatable to a degree. It has the distinction of being the oldest prophetic text of its kind outside of Scripture and it shows parallels with some of the Old Testament prophets.
The text relates a couple of different things. In the first section, Balaam has a dream in which an angry goddess, Shagar, who might be identified as Astarte, threatens to destroy the people with great fire and darkness. She is opposed by El and the Shaddayin, an assembly of gods. The term “Shaddayin” is connected to “Shaddai,” often translated as “Almighty”. Both the terms “El” and “Shaddai” are used of God in the Old Testament and in Balaam’s account in Numbers 24-26. At this night vision (which is what Balaam also has in the Numbers account), Balaam weeps (as Elisha also does in 2 Kings 8:7-10) and his uncle inquires of the situation. The text is missing, but it is assumed that Balaam relates the dream and warns the people to repent. However, it seems that this warning has fallen on deaf ears which leads into the second major section of the prophecy in which Balaam lists some curses for disobedience, which is a theme very common in the pages of the Old Testament (harkening back to the curse sections in the Law in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28)
This inscription is a valuable piece to those who wish to defend the Bible veracity. It portrays a Biblical prophet operating in the way that the Bible describes (through night visions) and operating in an area (the Transjordan) in which the Bible states he operated. It also gives nice parallels to depictions of things that happen in the Old Testament prophets where a vision would occur, the communication to the people, rejection by the people, and the pronouncement of curses upon the people.