Numbers 23
1Balaam said to Balak, “Build me seven altars here and have seven bulls and seven rams ready here for me.”
2Balak did as Balaam directed; and Balak and Balaam offered up a bull and a ram on each altar.
3Then Balaam said to Balak, “Stay here beside your offerings while I am gone. Perhaps GOD will grant me a manifestation, and whatever is revealed to me I will tell you.” And he went off alone. uncertain.
4God became manifest to Balaam, who stated, “I have set up the seven altars and offered up a bull and a ram on each altar.”
5And GOD put a word in Balaam’s mouth and said, “Return to Balak and speak thus.”
6So he returned to him and found him standing beside his offerings, and all the Moabite dignitaries with him.
7He took up his theme, and said:From Aram has Balak brought me,Moab’s king from the hills of the East:Come, curse me Jacob,Come, tell Israel’s doom!
8How can I damn whom God, as often in these poems. has not damned,How doom when GOD has not doomed?
9As I see them from the mountain tops,Gaze on them from the heights,There is a people that dwells apart,Not reckoned among the nations,
10Who can count the dust of Jacob,Number the dust-cloud of Israel?May I die the death of the upright,, a play on yeshurun (“Jeshurun” in Deut. 32.15), a name for Israel. May my fate be like theirs!
11Then Balak said to Balaam, “What have you done to me? Here I brought you to damn my enemies, and instead you have blessed them!”
12He replied, “I can only repeat faithfully what GOD puts in my mouth.”
13Then Balak said to him, “Come with me to another place from which you can see them—you will see only a portion of them; you will not see all of them—and damn them for me from there.”
14With that, he took him to Sedeh-zophim, on the summit of Pisgah. He built seven altars and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.
15And [Balaam] said to Balak, “Stay here beside your offerings, while I seek a manifestation yonder.”
16GOD became manifest to Balaam and put a word in his mouth, saying, “Return to Balak and speak thus.”
17He went to him and found him standing beside his offerings, and the Moabite dignitaries with him. Balak asked him, “What did GOD say?”
18And he took up his theme, and said:Up, Balak, attend,Give ear unto me, son of Zippor!
19God is not human to be capricious,Or mortal to have a change of heart.Would [God] speak and not act,Promise and not fulfill?
20My message was to bless:When [God] blesses, I cannot reverse it.
21No harm is in sight for Jacob,No woe in view for Israel. The ETERNAL their God is with them,And their Sovereign’s acclaim in their midst.
22God who freed them from EgyptIs for them like the horns of the wild ox.
23Lo, there is no augury in Jacob,No divining in Israel: Jacob is told at once,Yea Israel, what God has planned.
24Lo, a people that rises like a lioness, uncertain. Leaps up like a lion,Rests not till it has feasted on preyAnd drunk the blood of the slain.
25Thereupon Balak said to Balaam, “Don’t curse them and don’t bless them!”
26In reply, Balaam said to Balak, “But I told you: Whatever GOD says, that I must do.”
27Then Balak said to Balaam, “Come now, I will take you to another place. Perhaps God will deem it right that you damn them for me there.”
28Balak took Balaam to the peak of Peor, which overlooks the wasteland.
29Balaam said to Balak, “Build me here seven altars, and have seven bulls and seven rams ready for me here.”
30Balak did as Balaam said: he offered up a bull and a ram on each altar.