Then Balaam ¹  uttered ²  his oracle, saying, “Balak, the king of Moab, brought me ³  from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, ‘Come, pronounce a curse on Jacob for me; come, denounce Israel.’ ⁴ 

and 32,000 young women who had never had sexual intercourse with a man. ¹ 

there were 337,500 sheep from the portion belonging to the community,

To the Reubenites and Gadites I allocated the territory extending from Gilead as far as Wadi Arnon (the exact middle of the wadi was a boundary) all the way to the Wadi Jabbok, the Ammonite border.

From heaven he spoke to you in order to teach you, and on earth he showed you his great fire from which you also heard his words. ¹ 

fed you in the desert with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you ¹  and eventually bring good to you.

So I turned and went down the mountain while it ¹  was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.

When I looked, you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God and had cast for yourselves a metal calf; ¹  you had quickly turned aside from the way he ²  had commanded you!

Then I turned, went down the mountain, and placed the tablets into the ark I had made – they are still there, just as the Lord commanded me.

You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, ¹  burn up their sacred Asherah poles, ²  and cut down the images of their gods; you must eliminate their very memory from that place.

There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land ¹  for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning. ² 

You must then do as they have determined at that place the Lord chooses. Be careful to do just as you are taught.

The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed.

The manna stopped appearing the day they ate ¹  some of the produce of the land; the Israelites never ate manna again. ² 

When the Canaanites and all who live in the land hear about this, they will turn against us and destroy the very memory of us ¹  from the earth. What will you do to protect your great reputation?” ² 

He told ¹  them, “Look, set an ambush behind the city. Don’t go very far from the city; all of you be ready!

They will attack ¹  us until we have lured them from the city, for they will say, ‘They are retreating from us like before.’ We will retreat from them.

All the reinforcements ¹  in Ai ²  were ordered ³  to chase them; they chased Joshua and were lured away from the city.

All Jerusalem was terrified ¹  because Gibeon was a large city, like one of the royal cities. It was larger than Ai and all its men were warriors.

Joshua said, “Open the cave’s mouth and bring the five kings ¹  out of the cave to me.”