Scriptures

New Living Translation (NLT)

Numbers 23
² Balak followed his instructions, and the two of them sacrificed a young bull and a ram on each altar.
³ Then 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,
⁴ and 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.”
⁵ The LORD gave Balaam a message for King Balak. Then he said, “Go back to Balak and give him my message.”
⁶ So Balaam returned and found the king standing beside his burnt offerings with all the officials of Moab.
⁷ This 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.’
⁸ But how can I curse those whom God has not cursed? How can I condemn those whom the LORD has not condemned?
⁹ I 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.
¹⁰ Who 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.”
¹¹ Then King Balak demanded of Balaam, “What have you done to me? I brought you to curse my enemies. Instead, you have blessed them!”
¹² But Balaam replied, “I will speak only the message that the LORD puts in my mouth.”