Numbers 23:1-12 ▼

1 Then Balaam said to Balak, “Build me seven altars here, and here prepare seven bulls and seven rams for me.”

2 So Balak did as Balaam had ordered, and Balak and Balaam offered a bull and a ram on each altar.

3 Balaam said to Balak, “Stand here by your burnt offering while I go over there. Perhaps the LORD will meet me, and then I will tell you whatever he lets me see.” And so he went out on the barren height.

4 Then God met Balaam, and Balak said to him: “I have erected the seven altars, and have offered a bull and a ram on each altar.”

5 The LORD put an utterance in Balaam’s mouth, and said: Go back to Balak, and speak accordingly.

6 So he went back to Balak, who was still standing by his burnt offering together with all the princes of Moab.

7 Then Balaam recited his poem: From Aram Balak has led me here, Moab’s king, from the mountains of Qedem: “Come, curse for me Jacob, come, denounce Israel.”

8 How can I lay a curse on the one whom God has not cursed? How denounce the one whom the LORD has not denounced?

9 For from the top of the crags I see him, from the heights I behold him. Here is a people that lives apart and does not reckon itself among the nations.

10 Who has ever counted the dust of Jacob, who numbered Israel’s dust-cloud? May I die the death of the just, may my end be like theirs!

11 “What have you done to me?” cried Balak to Balaam. “It was to lay a curse on my foes that I brought you here; but instead, you have blessed them!”

12 Balaam replied, “Is it not what the LORD puts in my mouth that I take care to repeat?”