¹Balaam said to Balak, “Build seven altars here, and prepare seven bulls and seven rams for me.” ²Balak did what Balaam told him, and the two of them offered a bull and a ram on each altar.

³Balaam said to Balak, “Stay here beside your burnt offering while I’m gone. Maybe the Lord will come and meet with me. I will tell you whatever he reveals to me.” Then Balaam went off to a higher place where there were no trees.

⁴God came to him, and Balaam said, “I have set up seven altars, and I offered a bull and a ram on each altar.”

⁵The Lord told Balaam, “Go back to Balak, and give him my message.”

⁶So he went back to Balak and found him standing beside his burnt offering with all the princes of Moab. ⁷Then Balaam delivered this message:

“Balak brought me from Aram.

The king of Moab summoned me from the eastern mountains.

‘Come, curse Jacob for me,’ he said.

‘Come, condemn Israel.’

⁸How can I curse those whom God hasn’t cursed?

How can I condemn those whom the Lord hasn’t condemned?

⁹I see them from the top of rocky cliffs,

I look at them from the hills.

I see a nation that lives by itself,

people who do not consider themselves

to be like other nations.

¹⁰The descendants of Jacob are like specks of dust.

Who can count them

or number even one-fourth of the people of Israel?

Let me die the death of innocent people.

Let my end be like theirs.”

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