7. Then Balaam recited his poem:From Aram Balak has led me here,Moab’s king, from the mountains of Qedem:“Come, curse for me Jacob,come, denounce Israel.”
8. How can I lay a curse on the one whom God has not cursed?How denounce the one whom the Lord has not denounced?
9. For from the top of the crags I see him,from the heights I behold him.Here is a people that lives apartand does not reckon itself among the nations.
10. Who has ever counted the dust of Jacob,who numbered Israel’s dust-cloud?May I die the death of the just,may my end be like theirs!
11. “What have you done to me?” cried Balak to Balaam. “It was to lay a curse on my foes that I brought you here; but instead, you have blessed them!”
12. Balaam replied, “Is it not what the Lord puts in my mouth that I take care to repeat?”