Numbers 23:7-12 ▼

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?”