If God puts no trust in his servants and attributes folly to his angels,

He has blocked my way so I cannot pass, and has set darkness over my paths.

If God were to set his heart on it, and gather in his spirit and his breath,

It makes the deep boil like a cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment,

But if the animals were weaker, he did not set the branches there. So the weaker animals ended up belonging to Laban and the stronger animals to Jacob.

Balaam replied, “Must I not be careful to speak what the Lord has put in my mouth?”

From the city the dying groan, and the wounded cry out for help, but God charges no one with wrongdoing.

And the eye of the adulterer watches for the twilight, thinking, ‘No eye can see me,’ and covers his face with a mask.

For he does not still consider a person, that he should come before God in judgment.

“Look, here is the man who would not make God his protector! He trusted in his great wealth and was confident about his plans to destroy others.”

He will not grow dim or be crushed before establishing justice on the earth; the coastlands will wait in anticipation for his decrees.”

Don’t allow him to rest until he reestablishes Jerusalem, until he makes Jerusalem the pride of the earth.

So he poured out his fierce anger on them, along with the devastation of war. Its flames encircled them, but they did not realize it; it burned against them, but they did notice.

Their tongues are like deadly arrows. They are always telling lies. Friendly words for their neighbors come from their mouths. But their minds are thinking up ways to trap them.

“‘If he cannot afford two turtledoves or two young pigeons, he must bring as his offering for his sin which he has committed a tenth of an ephah of choice wheat flour for a sin offering. He must not place olive oil on it and he must not put frankincense on it, because it is a sin offering.

Balaam said to Balak, “Look, I have come to you. Now, am I able to speak just anything? I must speak only the word that God puts in my mouth.”

Saul said to his servants who were stationed around him, “Listen up, you Benjaminites! Is Jesse’s son giving fields and vineyards to all of you? Or is he making all of you commanders and officers?

My lord should not pay attention to this wicked man Nabal. He simply lives up to his name! His name means ‘fool,’ and he is indeed foolish! But I, your servant, did not see the servants my lord sent.

Therefore speak to them and say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: When any one from the house of Israel erects his idols in his heart and sets the obstacle leading to his iniquity before his face, and then consults a prophet, I the Lord am determined to answer him personally according to the enormity of his idolatry.

For when anyone from the house of Israel, or the foreigner who lives in Israel, separates himself from me and erects his idols in his heart and sets the obstacle leading to his iniquity before his face, and then consults a prophet to seek something from me, I the Lord am determined to answer him personally.