🔢WEB · Numbers 23:10
What does Numbers 23:10 mean?
"Who can count the dust of Jacob, or count the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous! Let my last end be like his!”"
— Numbers 23:10 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
He took up his parable, and said, “From Aram has Balak brought me, the king of Moab from the mountains of the East. Come, curse Jacob for me. Come, defy Israel.
How shall I curse whom God has not cursed? How shall I defy whom Yahweh has not defied?
For from the top of the rocks I see him. From the hills I see him. Behold, it is a people that dwells alone, and shall not be listed among the nations.
Who can count the dust of Jacob, or count the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous! Let my last end be like his!”
Balak said to Balaam, “What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, and behold, you have blessed them altogether.”
He answered and said, “Must I not take heed to speak that which Yahweh puts in my mouth?”
Balak said to him, “Please come with me to another place, where you may see them. You shall see just part of them, and shall not see them all. Curse them from there for me.”
Explanation
Numbers 23:10 records part of the prophet Balaam's first oracle over Israel. In plain language, he is saying that Israel's descendants are as impossible to count as grains of dust, and that even attempting to number just a fraction of them ("the fourth part of Israel") is beyond his ability. Struck by what he sees, he then voices a personal wish: that when he dies, he might die the death of a righteous person, and that his final end would resemble the blessed destiny of this nation.
The context is crucial to understanding the verse. Balak, king of Moab, feared Israel's growing power and hired Balaam, a pagan diviner, to curse the Israelites as they journeyed toward the Promised
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