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Read the winning piece of our 2025 Nonfiction Contest “Through the Mirror” by Jessie Cato selected by Lucy Ives.

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Robert Alter

Nonfiction

Autumn 2004

Balaam and the Ass: An Excerpt from a New Translation of the “Five Books of Moses”

By Robert Alter

Introduction These three chapters from the Book of Numbers reflect a moment in the narrative when the Israelites, after forty years of wandering in the wilderness, are approaching the land […]

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Robert Alter

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Nonfiction

Balaam and the Ass: An Excerpt from a New Translation of the “Five Books of Moses”