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?”
13. Then Balak said to him, “Please come with me to another place from which you can see them; but you will see only some, not all of them, and from there lay a curse on them for me.”
14. So he brought him to a lookout post on the top of Pisgah, where he built seven altars and offered a bull and a ram on each of them.
15. Balaam then said to Balak, “Stand here by your burnt offering, while I seek a meeting over there.”