Numbers 23 Summary and Study Guide: Balaam Blesses Israel

The line most people know from this chapter, that God is not a man that he should lie, was first spoken on a Moabite hilltop by a man who was being paid a great deal of money to say the opposite. This Numbers 23 summary and study guide covers the chapter where Balak king of Moab hired the seer Balaam to curse Israel, and heard him bless them twice instead.

Setting the Stage

God told Abraham, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3), promising to take personally whatever anyone did to Abraham’s family. Nobody had yet tested that by hiring a professional curser.

Centuries later Abraham’s descendants left Egypt, crossed the wilderness, and camped on the plains of Moab. Balak king of Moab saw the size of that camp and was afraid, so he sent to Mesopotamia for a seer named Balaam. God told Balaam, “thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed” (Numbers 22:12), then allowed the trip on one condition: Balaam could speak only what God gave him. Numbers 23 opens on the hilltop where Balak has just brought him to look down on the camp (Numbers 22:41).

Comprehensive Numbers 23 Summary

Balak has paid a famous seer to curse the Israelite camp below him, and Numbers 23 is where the money runs into God. Balaam starts with the apparatus of his trade, ordering seven altars built and fourteen animals killed on them, then walking off alone to see whether the LORD will meet him.

God does meet him, and takes his mouth. What comes back down the hill is a blessing. Balaam tells Balak he cannot curse a people God has not cursed, calls Israel a nation living apart and too many to count, and finishes by wishing his own death could be like theirs.

Balak is furious, and he decides the problem is the view. He assumes a different hilltop will produce a different word, so he takes Balaam across to a lookout on the ridge of Pisgah and has the seven altars built all over again. The LORD meets Balaam there in almost the same words as before, and the second oracle is stronger than the first.

This one is about God rather than about Israel. God does not lie, He does not change His mind, and what He has blessed no one can turn back. No omen and no divination has any power against this people, Balaam says, and Israel will rise up like a lion.

At that Balak gives up on the curse and asks only for silence, which Balaam cannot give him either. Then he tries a third hill anyway, on the top of Peor, and orders another seven altars built. The chapter ends with the fires lit and the answer not yet spoken.

One Word Summary

• Irreversible: what God has blessed cannot be turned back (23:20).
• Hired: the blessing came out of a man paid to curse (23:7, 23:11).
• Unbought: no amount of sacrifice bent God’s decision (23:4-5).
• Overheard: Israel never learns any of this is happening.

In One Sentence

Balak king of Moab pays Balaam to curse Israel from two different hilltops, and both times God puts a blessing in Balaam’s mouth instead, after which Balak sets up a third hill and tries again.

Theme of Numbers 23

Numbers 23 is about a blessing that cannot be reversed. God had bound Himself to Israel long before Balak ever sent for a seer, and this chapter tests that binding in the most direct way the ancient world knew: money, ritual, and a professional curse, applied from three directions in a single day.

Running underneath it are the reasons the blessing holds, and every one of them names something true of God Himself. He tells the truth. He keeps His word once He has given it. He is present among His people as their King. And no omen or divination has any purchase on Him at all.

Numbers 23 Outline

• Numbers 23:1-3: Balaam has seven altars built and fourteen animals offered, then goes off alone to a high place to see whether the LORD will meet him.
• Numbers 23:4-6: God meets Balaam, puts a word in his mouth, and sends him back to Balak, who is standing by his burnt offering with all the princes of Moab.
• Numbers 23:7-10: Balaam’s first oracle says he cannot curse a people God has not cursed, and it ends with him wishing he could die their death.
• Numbers 23:11-12: Balak protests that he paid for a curse, and Balaam answers that he can only speak what the LORD puts in his mouth.
• Numbers 23:13-14: Balak moves him to the field of Zophim on the top of Pisgah, where seven more altars are built and another fourteen animals offered.
• Numbers 23:15-17: Balaam withdraws again, the LORD meets him and puts a word in his mouth, and Balak asks what the LORD has spoken.
• Numbers 23:18-24: Balaam’s second oracle declares that God does not lie or change His mind, that the blessing cannot be reversed, and that Israel will rise like a lion.
• Numbers 23:25-26: Balak tells Balaam to stop blessing if he will not curse, and Balaam repeats that he must do whatever the LORD says.
• Numbers 23:27-30: Balak takes Balaam to the top of Peor overlooking Jeshimon and has a third set of seven altars built.

The Two Oracles of Balaam

The chapter’s centre is two pieces of Hebrew poetry, which the King James calls parables. Balaam composed neither one.

The first oracle looks at Israel:

“How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied? For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!”

Numbers 23:8-10

Balaam is asking how he is supposed to curse people God has not cursed. From the rocks he sees a nation living by itself and not counted among the nations, and a people as countless as dust, and he says he wants his own death and his own end to be like theirs.

The second oracle looks at God:

“God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.”

Numbers 23:19-20

God is not a human being who tells lies, Balaam says, and not a human being who says a thing and then takes it back. If God has spoken, He will do it. Balaam has been given an order to bless, God has already blessed, and Balaam cannot undo it.

The second answers the first. The first says Israel cannot be cursed. The second says why.

Observations from Numbers 23

Twenty-One Altars, and God Never Asked for One (23:1, 23:14, 23:29)

Balaam calls for seven altars on the first hill, seven on the second, and seven on the third, with a bullock and a ram burned on each one. That is twenty-one altars and forty-two animals in a single day, and God never asked for a single one of them. Israel worshipped at one altar.

Balak is buying a procedure, and the procedure produces nothing. Many scholars think the fourteen animals at each site also supplied the livers and organs a diviner read for omens, which would make the altars part of Balaam’s technique rather than an act of worship.

The Same Sentence Comes Down Both Hills (23:5, 23:16)

“And the LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth” (23:5). “And the LORD met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth” (23:16). Balak changed the mountain, and God gave the same kind of answer in almost the same words. The one thing Balak was able to change was the one thing that made no difference.

Balak Keeps Moving, and Calls It a Plan (23:13, 23:27)

Twice Balak proposes another place. The first time he wants Balaam to see only the edge of the camp; the second time he hopes God will be more willing from Peor. Both times he is treating a settled decision of God as a problem of angle and elevation. Many Bible teachers read Balak here as a picture of every attempt to get a different answer from God by rearranging the circumstances rather than by changing anything real.

God Is Still Bringing Them Out of Egypt (23:22)

The King James reads “God brought them out of Egypt”, and Hebrew scholars point out that the verb behind it is a participle, describing an action still under way, which is why many translations render it “God brings them out”. Forty years after the Red Sea the rescue was still in progress, and it would finish on the other side of the Jordan. Balak was trying to curse a people God had not yet finished carrying.

Israel Never Speaks and Never Knows (23:1-30)

Israel is the subject of all thirty verses and the speaker of none. Moses is not in the chapter. The people are down in their tents while a king spends a fortune trying to have them destroyed, and God refuses him twice without anyone in the camp ever hearing about it. What was keeping them safe that day was God’s promise.

Difficult Verses Explained

Does Numbers 23:19 Mean God Never Changes His Mind?

It means God stands by what He has settled, which is the very thing Balak was paying to have reversed. Elsewhere Scripture says God “repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people” after Moses interceded (Exodus 32:14), and that He turned from His anger when Nineveh repented (Jonah 3:10).

Those passages describe God responding to repentance and prayer, which is a different thing from a pagan king trying to buy a reversal of a promise. Samuel states the same truth as verse 19 in almost the same words: “the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent” (1 Samuel 15:29). For more on God’s unchanging character, see our study of the attributes of God.

How Can God Say He Sees No Iniquity in Jacob?

Verse 21 is not a statement that Israel had no sin, since the chapters on either side of it are full of Israel’s sin. Most Bible teachers read it as a statement about Israel’s standing before God rather than about Israel’s behaviour: God is looking at them as the people He covenanted with, and on that ground He finds nothing that would move Him to curse them.

Others read it as saying God saw no iniquity in them sufficient to abandon them at this moment, and a few take the Hebrew words as “trouble” and “misery” rather than moral evil, so that God is refusing to let harm come to Jacob. What all three readings agree on is the second half of the verse, which gives the reason: “the LORD his God is with him.”

What Is a Unicorn Doing in Numbers 23:22?

The King James translates a Hebrew word, reem, as “unicorn”, and the animal it names is almost certainly the wild ox rather than the one-horned creature of legend. The point of the image is untameable strength. Moses later speaks of “the horns of unicorns” in the plural (Deuteronomy 33:17), which is one reason most translators now render the animal as a wild ox.

Why Does a Blessing End With Drinking the Blood of the Slain?

Verse 24 pictures Israel’s coming victories in Canaan. The lion was a familiar Old Testament image for a nation nobody could stop, and Jacob had already used it of Judah: “Judah is a lion’s whelp” (Genesis 49:9). Balak had asked for a curse on Israel and was told instead that these people were the lion, not the prey.

Why Would God Speak Through a Man the New Testament Condemns?

Because God uses whatever messenger He chooses, and here He makes His point at Balaam’s expense. He had already spoken through Balaam’s donkey one chapter earlier (Numbers 22:28). Balaam could report what God showed him and could not invent a word of his own, and that is exactly what makes him useful here: Israel gets blessed by the very person Balak paid to curse them. Scripture is blunt about what he was, calling him one “who loved the wages of unrighteousness” (2 Peter 2:15).

Common Misunderstandings

• That Balaam gives three oracles in this chapter. He gives two. The third hill is prepared at the end of Numbers 23, and the third oracle is spoken in Numbers 24:3-9.
• That Balak angrily dismisses Balaam here. Balak’s outburst and his dismissal come later, in Numbers 24:10-11. In this chapter he is still trying.
• That Balaam is an example of obedience. He speaks God’s words accurately and Scripture still condemns him, in 2 Peter 2:15, Jude 11 and Revelation 2:14. Numbers 31:16 says his counsel is what later drew Israel into sin.
• That the seven altars were worship God asked for. God never mentions them, and He makes no comment on them when Balaam presents the tally (23:4-5).
• That “no enchantment against Jacob” promises nothing bad will happen. Two chapters later Israel falls at Peor, drawn in by an invitation rather than struck down by a curse (Numbers 25:1-3). What verse 23 rules out is the power of anyone else’s words to undo God’s blessing.
• That the chapter has something to do with the number twenty-three. It does not. This is the twenty-third chapter of the book of Numbers, and the number is a chapter marker.

Christ Connection

The whole chapter turns on a curse that could not land, because God had already blessed the people it was aimed at. The New Testament tells us where that curse finally did land: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ” (Galatians 3:13-14).

Christ took on Himself the curse we had earned, so that Abraham’s blessing could reach people outside Israel altogether. Numbers 23 shows a curse bouncing off a people. Calvary shows where it stopped.

Scripture returns to this episode four separate times. Moses said, “the LORD thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the LORD thy God loved thee” (Deuteronomy 23:5). Nehemiah repeats it (Nehemiah 13:2), Joshua records God’s own account of it (Joshua 24:9-10), and Micah tells Israel to remember what Balak planned and what Balaam answered, “that ye may know the righteousness of the LORD” (Micah 6:5). Four connections run from this chapter forward into the New Testament:

• God cannot lie. Verse 19 becomes the ground of Christian assurance. Hebrews 6:18 says that “by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation”, and Titus 1:2 speaks of “God, that cannot lie.”
• The promises hold in Christ. Because God does not go back on His word, Paul can write that “all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
• Sin not reckoned. Verse 21 says God did not behold iniquity in Jacob, and Paul quotes David for why God can look at a sinner that way: “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” (Romans 4:8).
• The King in the midst. “The shout of a king is among them” (23:21) echoes Israel’s older confession that “the LORD shall reign for ever and ever” (Exodus 15:18), and it points toward the King who came and stood among His own people.

When, Where, and Why

• When: The fortieth year after the exodus, in the final months before Israel crossed the Jordan. Israel had already defeated Sihon and Og and was camped in the plains of Moab, so this chapter sits near the end of the wilderness period.
• Where: Three named heights east of the Dead Sea, all chosen because a curse in the ancient world was believed to need a view of its target. Balak’s first site was the high places of Baal (Numbers 22:41), the second was the field of Zophim on the top of Pisgah, the ridge from which Moses would later be shown the promised land (Deuteronomy 34:1), and the third was the top of Peor.
• Why: Numbers records how one generation forfeited the land and the next reached it, and this chapter shows the danger that generation never saw. Moses sets down what happened above the camp so that Israel would know their security in those last months rested on God’s promise rather than on their own watchfulness, and Micah 6:5 says God wanted the story kept for exactly that reason.

Key Verses

“How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied?”

Numbers 23:8

Balaam asks a question that has no answer in it. God has laid no curse on Israel, so there is nothing for Balaam to pronounce, and Balak’s whole plan collapses on the first hill. What he has run into is the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, and it comes out of his own mouth.

“Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.”

Numbers 23:20

The order Balaam received was to bless, and a blessing God has spoken stands. He tells Balak he is unable to turn it back, which is a different confession from being unwilling. The most sought-after curser in the region is admitting to his employer that the job is impossible.

“Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!”

Numbers 23:23

Omen-reading and divination have no power against this people, and what will be said about them is a cry of wonder at what God has done. Verse 23 strikes at the belief Balak’s whole plan rested on, that the right expert with the right ritual could make unseen powers do his bidding.

“Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!”

Numbers 23:10

Nobody can count Jacob’s descendants, Balaam says, or even a quarter of Israel, and he asks that he might die as the righteous die and finish as they finish. Israel camped in four divisions, so he could not number even the section nearest him, and the promise of Genesis 13:16 was standing in front of him as a fact. His wish was never granted; he died by the sword in battle against the people he blessed (Numbers 31:8).

Key Lessons from Numbers 23

• A blessing God has given cannot be cancelled by someone who wants it cancelled, at any price (23:8, 23:20).
• Changing the angle does not change the verdict, which is what Balak learned on three hills in one day (23:13, 23:27).
• Religious effort is not leverage over God, and twenty-one altars bought Balak nothing (23:1, 23:14, 23:29).
• God’s promises are exactly as reliable as God Himself, who does not lie or take back what He has said (23:19).
• A believer’s security rests on the God who is present with him rather than on how well he is doing (23:21).
• Some of the best things God does for His people happen where they never see them (23:1-30; Deuteronomy 23:5).

To see where this chapter sits in the whole book, read our overview: The Book of Numbers Summary by Chapter.

Bible Study Questions

1. What does Balaam actually ask for in verses 1 to 3, and what does he expect the altars and animals to accomplish?
2. God says nothing about the seven altars when He meets Balaam in verses 4 and 5. What does His silence about them suggest?
3. Balak’s response to the first blessing is to change locations (23:13). What does that tell you about what he believed the problem was?
4. Verse 19 says God does not lie and does not take His word back. What difference does that make to a promise of God you have been holding on to, or to one you have found hard to believe?
5. Verse 21 says the LORD his God is with Israel. How does that reason for their safety differ from the reasons people usually give for feeling secure?
6. Israel never appears and never speaks in this chapter. What does that silence say about who was keeping them safe?
7. Micah 6:5 tells Israel to remember Balak and Balaam so they would know the righteousness of the LORD. What does this chapter show you about God that you would not have seen otherwise?

Frequently Asked Questions

Numbers 23, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven oxen and seven rams.

2 And Balak did as Balaam had spoken; and Balak and Balaam offered on every altar a bullock and a ram.

3 And Balaam said unto Balak, Stand by thy burnt offering, and I will go: peradventure the LORD will come to meet me: and whatsoever he sheweth me I will tell thee. And he went to an high place.

4 And God met Balaam: and he said unto him, I have prepared seven altars, and I have offered upon every altar a bullock and a ram.

5 And the LORD put a word in Balaam’s mouth, and said, Return unto Balak, and thus thou shalt speak.

6 And he returned unto him, and, lo, he stood by his burnt sacrifice, he, and all the princes of Moab.

7 And he took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel.

8 How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied?

9 For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.

10 Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!

11 And Balak said unto Balaam, What hast thou done unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast blessed them altogether.

12 And he answered and said, Must I not take heed to speak that which the LORD hath put in my mouth?

13 And Balak said unto him, Come, I pray thee, with me unto another place, from whence thou mayest see them: thou shalt see but the utmost part of them, and shalt not see them all: and curse me them from thence.

14 And he brought him into the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah, and built seven altars, and offered a bullock and a ram on every altar.

15 And he said unto Balak, Stand here by thy burnt offering, while I meet the LORD yonder.

16 And the LORD met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and said, Go again unto Balak, and say thus.

17 And when he came to him, behold, he stood by his burnt offering, and the princes of Moab with him. And Balak said unto him, What hath the LORD spoken?

18 And he took up his parable, and said, Rise up, Balak, and hear; hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor:

19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

20 Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.

21 He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them.

22 God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.

23 Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!

24 Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.

25 And Balak said unto Balaam, Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all.

26 But Balaam answered and said unto Balak, Told not I thee, saying, All that the LORD speaketh, that I must do?

27 And Balak said unto Balaam, Come, I pray thee, I will bring thee unto another place; peradventure it will please God that thou mayest curse me them from thence.

28 And Balak brought Balaam unto the top of Peor, that looketh toward Jeshimon.

29 And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven bullocks and seven rams.

30 And Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered a bullock and a ram on every altar.