Then Balaam said to King Balak, “Build me seven altars here, and prepare seven young bulls and seven rams for me to sacrifice.” ²Balak followed his instructions, and the two of them sacrificed a young bull and a ram on each altar.

³Then Balaam said to Balak, “Stand here by your burnt offerings, and I will go to see if the Lord will respond to me. Then I will tell you whatever he reveals to me.” So Balaam went alone to the top of a bare hill, ⁴and God met him there. Balaam said to him, “I have prepared seven altars and have sacrificed a young bull and a ram on each altar.”

⁵The Lord gave Balaam a message for King Balak. Then he said, “Go back to Balak and give him my message.”

⁶So Balaam returned and found the king standing beside his burnt offerings with all the officials of Moab. ⁷This was the message Balaam delivered:

“Balak summoned me to come from Aram;

the king of Moab brought me from the eastern hills.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘curse Jacob for me!

Come and announce Israel’s doom.’

⁸But how can I curse those

whom God has not cursed?

How can I condemn those

whom the Lord has not condemned?

⁹I see them from the cliff tops;

I watch them from the hills.

I see a people who live by themselves,

set apart from other nations.

¹⁰Who can count Jacob’s descendants, as numerous as dust?

Who can count even a fourth of Israel’s people?

Let me die like the righteous;

let my life end like theirs.”

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