Balak said to Balaam, “Come, please; I will take you to another place. Perhaps it will please God to let you curse them for me from there.”

So the Lord’s anger was kindled against the Israelites, and he made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, until all that generation that had done wickedly before the Lord was finished.

When Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, he did not go as at the other times to seek for omens, but he set his face toward the wilderness.