Numbers 23:5-10
The Message
5 Then God gave Balaam a message: “Return to Balak and give him this message.”
6-10 He went back and found him stationed beside his Whole-Burnt-Offering and with him all the nobles of Moab. Then Balaam spoke his message-oracle:
Balak led me here from Aram,
the king of Moab all the way from the eastern mountains.
“Go, curse Jacob for me;
go, damn Israel.”
How can I curse whom God has not cursed?
How can I damn whom God has not damned?
From rock pinnacles I see them,
from hilltops I survey them:
Look! a people camping off by themselves,
thinking themselves outsiders among nations.
But who could ever count the dust of Jacob
or take a census of cloud-of-dust Israel?
I want to die like these right-living people!
I want an end just like theirs!
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson